Social media is the most powerful source of information in the world. In the YouTube video “Social Media Revolution”, there is a quote that says, “We no longer search for the news, the news finds us,” which is very true. I am constantly finding out about things happening in the world by logging onto Facebook or Twitter. People are constantly tweeting or updating their statuses about how they feel about decisions in politics, sports trades, actions of celebrities, etc.
According to an article in The Huffington Post, “Newspaper circulation is down 8.7% in the US” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/26/newspaper-circulation-dow_n_551628.html). The video also says, “In the near future we will no longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media”. This means that businesses will have to rethink their marketing strategy to include a greater presence in the social media. Companies may have to start hiring younger people who may be just out of college and know how to get the word out about the company. This past summer, the company I worked at created a Facebook page to increase the exposure of the company and to release video testimonials of customers who had a positive experience. As the prevalence of the internet increases and the economy continues to struggle, companies are trying to think of less expensive ways to market themselves, such as decreasing the amount of print advertisements.
The video also said that Facebook had 100 million users in 9 months. This means that people may be overusing social media and are relying too much on it. People are also posting things on these websites that they may not want other people to see. I constantly find myself talking to someone and they mention something that they have done recently, but I already know because they have posted this information online. An article titled “Twitter Your Way to Getting Robbed” is about people posting too much on Twitter about their location so other people know exactly when they can enter a house with nobody home. People should be more wary of what they are posting. (http://mashable.com/2009/06/01/twitter-related-burglary)
In the future, these social media outlets will depend on people like me to increase the exposure of the websites because my generation is the most knowledgeable about these sites. I can definitely see these sites developing more applications that are more suited to businesspeople and companies because they will see that these companies are a good way to make more money. It will be up to us to determine how much longer the social media will continue to run our lives.
