The Rise of Social Media

Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, vBulletin, Avatars United, Bebo, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, Skyrock, and Netlog are just a few examples of social media software apps available to anyone. These days, if you are not participating in some form of social media- you are actually in the minority. Nielsen just released a study that suggests a mind boggling two thirds of the world’s Internet users visited a social networking site of some kind last year, and the numbers are growing at lightning speed with the fastest growth coming from 35-49 year-olds. Facebook is the number one social networking site- and according to Nielsen social media itself accounts for 10 percent of all Internet activity and it has now taken over email as the most popular Internet activity. These numbers say a lot about the challenges facing traditional media. It is certain that we are moving towards a model where it will be more about coming up with creating and interesting content- and less about the buy itself. The more interesting the message and content is, the more people will want to watch it, listen to it and share it. Rather than fear the “New World Social Media Order”, traditional push media like Television and Radio need to find away to embrace it and use it to communicate on a deeper level with their audiences and advertisers.