Week 3 - Blog Posting #5 -Social Media

Social media has impacted the way many of interact on many levels: how we communicate with friends, how we interact among ourselves and with instructors in schools, and how we collaborate and exchange ideas and market in the business world. This shift has impacted not only the digital natives and "millenials", but affected all age groups: grandparents adding grandchildren on their Myspace friends list, professors and students on Twitter, co-workers sharing LinkedIn connections (and searching Facebook to screen prospective hires).
Karl Fisch's "Did You Know" series of videos, which began to circulate on the internet in 2007, highlighted some of the staggering facts surrounding the rapid adoption of the internet and its communication pathways such as social media. The technology has evolved so rapidly that the video contineus to be updated regularly, with its most recent iteration (see above), version 4.0, surfacing in mid-2009.
When Twitter.com was launched, critics scoffed, calling it an unnecessary addition to the many other means for people to update on the web, asking, "[what are you doing]..who cares?"(Lawley 2007). However, less than three years later, people look to twitter much in the same way they once looked to broadcast news and later, internet search engines. Microsoft's newest search engine, Bing, now integrates twitter search; this year's litany of high-profile and celebrity deaths were searchable on twitter and Wikipedia before news stations like CNN were announcing them to the public.

The community is talking, and the community is listening. The community is winning.

Fisch, K. (Director). (2007, November 01). Did You Know? Retrieved September 19, 2009, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K04o2ic4g-A

Lawley, L. (2007, March 06). Thoughts on twitter [Web log post]. Retrieved September 19, 2009, from http://many.corante.com/archives/2007/03/06/thoughts_on_twitter.php