Right Here ... Right Now .

Social technologies, aka social media, are a new breed of technologies that have emerged over the last few years and have changed the face of the Web.

Many social media tools are now becoming household names, e.g. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and so on. 

Social media technologies fall into a number of different categories:

- Social networking – for establishing and building online relationships with others

- Micro-sharing (aka micro-bloggng, micro-updating and micro-messaging) – for sending, receiving and replying to short messages with others, in real-time

- Social bookmarking – for storing and sharing web links

- File-sharing – for saving and/or sharing files in all formats: pictures, videos, presentations, documents, screencasts, etc

- Communication tools – for communicating in various synchronous and asynchronous ways

- Collaboration tools – for working collaboratively with others to co-create documents, presentations, mindmaps, etc

- Blogging – for reading, commenting on, or writing blog posts

- Podcasting – for creating or listening to audio (MP3) files

- RSS – Really Simple Syndication – for subscribing to blog and other web news feeds

Is social media a fad or a revolution?

A number of people have tried to dismiss social media as a fad, but it is clear from the statistics provided in Eric Qualman’s Social Media Revolution from 2010 to 2015 videos , that sums up with the conclusion that - a huge number of people are using social media in their daily lives.  This includes facts like

- If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest ahead of the United States and only behind China and India.

- The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube.

- 80% of companies use social media for recruitment; 95% of these are using LinkedIn.

- Wikipedia has over 15 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica.

- There are over 200,000,000 blogs.

Consequently, social media use is having a big impact on all aspects of our daily life – including our work and the way we learn.

How is social media being used?

Many people believe that the main purpose of the Social Web is only for personal use –  that is for socializing with friends and family, and for fun – but it is apparent that it is now being used for many other purposes.

 A growing number of organizations are using social media to promote their products, services and activities to consumers.  They are also using social media sites for online recruitment.

 Social media is also being used by many people for professional use, e.g. to connect with colleagues outside their organizations.  Social media is even being used within organizations for both individual and team productivity and collaboration purposes.

 It is ironic to point out, that some organizations who use these tools to promote their products and services to consumers, do not allow their own employees to make use of them inside the organization. Fortunately there are many others who do understand the value of social media in organizations.

To conclude as Erik Qualman said ‘We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it !!