How has this rise in Social Media affected your life?
Social media websites have been around for a number of years now. Without you even knowing about them they are there. You may have even used such sites long before the Facebook and Twitter.
Social media websites and networks come in all sorts of forms. From web forums to social blogs, instant messaging to emailing. However, the term ‘social media’ has only been around since about 2004, when LinkedIn launched their social network application and the term has stuck and has gradually risen since. Now there is even a whole new market for social media marketing, that I am proud to say I’m apart of.
Here are 5 ways that social media has changed your daily life, and I bet you haven’t even thought about it.
1. The source of fresh news
I use the term ‘news’ fairly loosely, because I’m not talking about BBC news or CNN but I’m talking about the news that is more concerned with your personal life ie. what your friends are up to. If you’re like me then checking your Facebook over breakfast, lunch and dinner becomes more of a priority than the latest headlines.
2. Starting or Improving Business
Some people see these sites as a waste of time, but again, if you are more like me, I see them as an opportunity. Recently I have set up a Custard Media Solutions Fan Page on Facebook. The amount of people that you have access to on your profile is immense. If you think, there’s your friends, your friend’s friends, you get the idea. And if you can gain brand awareness from it then for half an hour of your time to set up and then daily updating is not really that much to ask.
3. Staying in touch
This is probably the most recognised ways and that’s staying in touch with friends. More often than not though, Facebook users for example probably don’t talk to 70% of their friends on Facebook, but you would be lost without them all. It has provided a medium whereby we can stay in touch with people all around the world, and in a way it has provided us with another means of entertainment, which to an older generation is quite sad, but to us it has become the epitome of how our lives have changed.
4. Revealing of Lives
As well as catching up with friends, starting up businesses and keeping up to date with news, we also provide news for other people. From being stuck in traffic with no petrol left and on the verge of breaking down (that was my piece of news this morning!) to whereabouts in the world you are. Obviously, what we reveal is completely up to us, and often we just reveal things about our lives that other people would find funny or interesting and things that people can interact with.
5. The Ability to Influence
X-Factor is one of the biggest TV shows in the country, love it or hate it. Each Christmas you can expect the Number 1 to be the track that the winner has released. Well all that changed this year, and I hate to say this, but it was all Facebook’s fault! Now, I wasn’t a Joe McElderry fan but I am certainly, definitely, in no uncertain terms, NOT a Rage Against The Machines Fan. However, I am a Facebook user and, I have to admit, a lover. I love what it has achieved, a Facebook petition for stopping that Number 1 spot being taken over by X-Factor…and it worked!
There are always new trends, fashions, tastes and changes to everyday life. The social media ‘trend’ is expanding rapidly and there is no sign of it slowing. They do affect our lives, whether we like it or not. So those of you, who think it is a waste of time, my advice, is to jump in, check it out before you miss the biggest social phenomenon since the mobile phone and let’s face it, you all have one of those!