It certainly feels like social media has been an
integral part of our daily lives forever. But it hasn’t! The next
generation will chuckle in disbelief over the stories of yesteryear (aka 1995),
an antiquated time where Y2K terror ran rampant -or rather, walked leisurely thanks to our dial up Internet. It wasn’t that long ago, but it’s easy to forget how sudden the rise of social media has been.
The FACEBOOK
incarnation as we know it only rolled out in 2006 and TWITTER appeared shortly after. Of course, before that we had MySpace,
Friendster and numerous chatrooms and the like, but the influence TWITTER has is nothing short of revolutionary.
In fact, TWITTER
has been used as a tool to coordinate actual REVOLUTIONS.
TWITTER
has
been referred to as THE PULSE OF THE PLANET. A global water cooler
if you will. TWITTER “trending”
information provides a clear snapshot about what issues people are talking
about RIGHT NOW. This unmatched global REAL –TIME
communications platform hosts over 400 million visitors monthly, from
World leaders and global news organizations to local businesses and citizen journalists.
The organization of this constant chatter is courtesy of the
lowly HASHTAG which has been
catapulted into superstardom by
TWITTER who utilize the # to group tweets on the same subject.
TWITTER
has
impacted every segment of society:
·
NEWS
MEDIA: Breaking news often
breaks on TWITTER
first. Remember the tale of heroic Captain Sully? Onlookers posted text and
images on Twitter a full 15 minutes before
the traditional media had a chance to cover the 2009 story of the US Airways
Flight that Pilot Chesley Sullenburger crash landed in the Hudson River. More
recently the Boston Bombings were covered extensively on Twitter.
·
BUSINESSES: Gone
are the days of having to WAIT to communicate. Customers can reach someone immediately
and vice versa. No one wants complaints going viral!
·
POLITICS: Ahead
of his re-election, Barak Obama utilized a specialist team dedicated to analyzing
tweets and status updates across America.
·
ACTIVISM: Just
one example - the Egyptian uprising: TWITTER allowed us watch this social
movement spread in real time and provided protestors a channel for organizing
protests and disseminating information.
·
CELEBRITY: Ashton
Kutcher holds the record for first TWITTER user to reach a million followers.
Since then, celebrities have a HUGE presence on TWITTER. This platform allows an
unprecedented level of control over their image.
TWITTER is not without its critics of
course. In the field of journalism especially, there is concern about the immediacy
of breaking news without time to pause and check facts, as was the case after
the Boston Bombings. But there is no
turning back. We simply have to adjust and evolve with this new media or fall behind.
