Okay, so. Today I want to talk about social media and networking. However, I want to focus less on the marketing and advertising aspects of it, and more on how it has evolved into a legitimate medium. With the recent introduction of Google's new social networking faction, Google+, and its unique features, other social networking sites have been endeavoring to keep up and compete. G+ introduces new features, namely the concept of "circles" which allows you to specify certain groups of friends, acquaintances, family, coworkers, etc.; and choose which groups get to see what you've posted (which Facebook has recently adopted). It also borrows features from other networking sites like Twitter's "status-only" form of posting, it's less direct and there is no "wall" feature like that of Facebook, although it does allow you to "tag" people in your posts with a "+" before their name. Just as Twitter (and subsequently Facebook) did with the "@".
Now, social networking sites have evolved over the past few years. I remember when Myspace and Xanga were the big deal, but nobody really paid attention unless they were in middle school. Then Facebook came along and restructured that same concept for the slightly older crowd. Now, however, social networking is no longer just a petty, self-absorbed forum on which to tell your friends what you're having for lunch, and where, and with whom, and a picture of it. I mean, well, it's also that, BUT it has become a legitimate, integral part of our society. For every Junior High School student posting song lyrics about teen drama and angst, there are legitimate businesses, charitable communities, sports teams, political organizations, video blogs, and easily-accessible celebrities. Facebook and YouTube have, I believe, played the most fundamental roles in this reshaping of how we network. YouTube videos and Facebook pages have become a legitimate medium for news, campaigning, and business networking. Facebook offers the option of making a page for your business at no cost. This provides advertising outreach to every user of the site who happens to stumble upon it. YouTube has become a place for businesses to purchase advertising time prior to videos in order to reach audiences who have reduced or abandoned television, in favor of more web-based entertainment or news. Even websites that were not originally designed as social networking sites have begun to take on some of its elements. Yahoo! has recently introduced a new feature for instantly sharing photos and publicly posted messages with all of your contacts on a social forum, and websites like StumbleUpon encourage you to create contacts with others and share your discoveries with them.
It seems strange for those of us who remember saying "Who cares? It's just Facebook." to think that potential employers have now hired entire departments of people whose only job is to screen the social networking histories of applicants with the same gravity with which they would perform a criminal background check. Or to realize that in the hustle and bustle of our increasingly busy days, a majority (if not all) of our social interactions happen on a screen. We are so desperate to stay connected with such demands on our time that smart phones are improving almost weekly to provide a more user-friendly interface with which to carry our social and professional lives around in our pockets.
Our society has shifted so much into a virtual world that now, I've noticed, starting with Google+, more and more privacy features are being introduced. We began social networking, despite its very nature, with a certain degree of anonymity. We were connected with whom we chose, just friends with our friends, and we felt free to blurt out every thought to share with the people who "got us" under the protective veil of the internet. Insecurities and inhibitions that kept us quiet in the real world dissolved. Photo tagging began, and our friends made plans to get together with the specific intention of taking photos to tag their friends in. Picture phones and compact digital cameras became constant companions to social networkers. Then parents, grandparents, and teachers got the hang of it, the younger generations became professionals, businesses began advertising their products and screening potential employees, all of our media websites began linking up with each other and offering to find our contacts from email and other website lists, our search results and listed interests began popping up verbatim in the banner ads on the sides of our screens, and that freedom to say whatever we wanted with impunity was banished to the mildewed comment sections of a few special interest sites, and bathroom stall graffiti. Social media has, for lack of a better word, infiltrated every aspect of our lives. Social, romantic, professional, academic; there are instant notifications for breaking news stories and every hobby, interest, and school of thought is represented in some form of online community. Recently, hanging on to the idea of being connected while retaining privacy or anonymity seems almost a bit naive. Though privacy features are being increased, soon social networks and media will offer us no more privacy or freedom than the physical realm, and no less pressure to adapt our behavior and profile settings accordingly.
Marshall McLuhan wrote about human beings creating and using technology as a necessary extension of our bodies in order to maintain equilibrium with our physical environment, such as wearing clothing and building shelters to protect us from the elements and give us privacy. Now that this tangible equilibrium has been reached (or can be with relative ease) in many modern societies, we are instead focusing on a virtual environment and inventing, by the same exact process, virtual tools and extensions needed to cope with it. Social networking may someday replace most or all of our face-to-face interaction and society, we may be a generation away from putting on a pair of goggles and living our lives in a world that is entirely virtual. Whatever the progression, one thing is for sure, the World Wide Web is vastly extending our World Wide World.
