by John Melendez

Created on: July 22, 2009   Last Updated: July 24, 2009

Cometh Now Social Media

An Informational Curse for Some, a Blessing for Others

The Latest In Communication Fashion

For a glimpse at the good ol' days before social media, click here and revel at some of the monstrosities of past social tech. Gone are the days when one merely picks up the telephone to call a friend. No! Now it cannot be that simple.

Or is it?

Given the miracles that modern technology has provided for us, on the web and on television we now see mention everywhere of the latest in technology fashion: Social Media.

Social Media Eclipses Traditional Communication

More recently we've had people mixing it up on Skype. Kids cross the street while text messaging, completely oblivious to cars zooming past them. Now there's MySpace, FaceBook and Twitter.

So, what is all this mumbo-jumbo? As the gods of Wikipedia would have it, social media is "is information content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies."

Mr. Wiki further states: "Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video. Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few."

What's absolutely so wonderful is this technology allows us to communicate with each other now through most any means. What's absolutely so maddening about all this technology allows us to communicate with each other through most any means. How's that for a double-edged sword on your plate? The challenge now is to wade through this wonderfully distracting quagmire of information.

And what will become this social media? The answer is: hurry up and wait. After an unspoken battle of scurrying and scrounging ensues, waxes, and slowly wanes away with so much settling of dust, only time will tell what its ultimate use will be. Meanwhile...

Some Social Media I Use

So how about some examples:

Blogs - Blogs ("web logs") and blogging are the modern day equivalent of what grandma and grandpa may have done when they picked up a fountain pen and rubbed the nib end of it on some creamy-smooth paper to create this thing called cursive handwriting. This rubbing of paper is now known as a "journal entry". These entries on electronic blogs may be of any length, and may contain all form of visual media goodies that folks sometimes call "eye candy", while others like YouTube may serve as blogs

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