How Social Media Is Changing the Way We Communicate
Social media technology is nothing new, and neither on mobile devices, but it is something that is new for the way we communicate. It was relatively a short period of time ago, since there were “beepers” a device that beeped to tell you to return a call to someone; it then took some time for those “beepers” to finally have a text feature so you could send text messages. This was when the Internet and the World Wide Web was in its relative infancy. Way back then people chatted over IRC connections as a major form of communications. This is something that has changed and social media can be used across a wide variety of platforms.
The Evolution of Social Media in the 21st Century
Fast forward through the 1990s and we have landed in a whole new world of social media; gone are the beepers and IRC chatting. There is a new generation of social media and it is growing by leaps and bounds. The ideas are not really new, but the technology is and it is all over the place. There are more ways to communicate than there ever have been before.
There were first computers with the Internet and chat clients and IM. This has become the new IRC, which you can still find IRC clients and chat rooms, though they have changed. The new methods allow you to chat, talk, and even have video conferencing. Then came along the social networks, forums, blogs, and other medium to communicate and stay connected in real time. It is these mediums; that make social media what it is today. Many of these have been around for a long time, but it has been in recent history that these mediums have gone in mainstream.
Fast Forward to Social Media on Mobile Devices
Yes, fast forward! It has been a whirl-wind of change in a relatively short period of time; that the evolution of mobile technology and social media has fell upon us. There has been a form of text message or sms for a long time, but it has only been in the past several years -or in this decade- that we have seen smartphones evolve into a mass communication device that allows you to stay connected on a global scale anywhere you are.
Without these “smart” devices; social media may not be as such an influential form of communication as it is today. Today there is the ability to post messages, photos, or even make a video call in a push of a button. It has developed to be a communication platform that is populated by the minds of the masses, and allows us to communicate in a very second.
The modern social media also allows us to be uniformly disconnected from a physical environment and gives a tool to a giant collective of businesses to sell their products to an entirely new audience; maybe for the better, or maybe for the worse.
About the Author:
This guest post is contributed by Debra Johnson, blogger and editor of Liveinnanny.com. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: – jdebra84 @ gmail.com.