Social Networking

There is no doubt that social networking is changing the world. Everyone is on a social network, and even every THING. Corporations, causes, products, artists, entertainers, and just about any division of the aforementioned have a social networking presence. What started as a way to connect with people has evolved into a way to connect with anything.

There are many benefits to this on a societal level. On one hand, you can easily connect to a company with a product question, feedback, or a problem. With increased transparency, products, customer service, and customer experience are all made better. Another aspect of societal benefit is the ease with which one can contact someone. In an emergency, a person is just a click, tweet, instant message, or wall post away. As Steve Chazin is quoted in the Stephen J. Dubner Freakonomics article, " Social networking tools have made it nearly effortless for me to keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues." That article can be found here: Or perhaps the desire to contact someone is purely for the purposes of catching up on an old friendship. A third reason that social networks benefit society is the spread of information. Natural disasters, celebrity deaths, sports news, and more are all brought to people instantly thanks to social networks. The newspaper's stories are outdated by the morning they're purchased. For these reasons (and there are many more), social networks have benefited society as a whole.

As touched on above, corporations have used social networking in many ways themselves. Connecting with customers for feedback and complaints is only one thing. Another huge use that corporations have for social networks is advertising and promotion. Facebook's ad program provides a great way to advertise to particular demographics, based on whatever factors the company wants. There are also promoted tweets and trending topics on Twitter. Corporations can also use social networks to run contests and spread information on their new products or services.

There is also a dark side to social media. Lack of face to face interaction with people has caused a decline in communication skills among the youth. As Hilary Stout writes in a New York Times article, "today’s youths may be missing out on experiences that help them develop empathy, understand emotional nuances and read social cues like facial expressions and body language." That article can be found here. People repeatedly use poor judgment by posting photos that are lewd or inappropriate, which negatively impacts their career chances. There is always the issue of privacy; most of the things we put on social networks are not things that would have been readily shared prior to the internet existing. The bottom line is that social networks come with a responsibility for the users. The use of the social network is entirely up to them, and it is their responsibility to keep their online presence clean.

How might social networks evolve in the future? This is a big question with many answers. We have already seen social networks connect with social gaming, a progression to short, quick status updates with Twitter, and the landscape on Facebook is almost always changing. In my opinion, I see social networks reaching a peak and then leveling out. In other words, their use will remain constant, and the number of new users on Facebook or Twitter will not be so great. Social networks will then be more directly and intentionally competing against each other, as the new users they will get will be taken directly from another social network.