02: SOCIAL MEDIA

Prior to the advent of social media, content-sharing was limited to a relatively small group of people. In those days, it was common that only those who could afford such things as web domains on which to host their content were able to share information. Of course, there was the existence of forum boards, but they only allowed for so much sharing. It was difficult to gauge the opinions of those reading unless one read through entire threads, and this was extremely time-consuming and was highly subject to the interpretation of the reader.

After the introduction of weblogs, things changed dramatically. It became easy for users to post their own content, and it was mostly affordable for the average user or in some cases even free, which contributed to a rise in the number of people who utilized them. While the term ‘web log’ or ‘blog’ was not coined until 1997, it was as early as 1994 that these sites began to emerge on the web. After a few years, the internet saw the rise of sites like digg and reddit, which consisted wholly of user-generated content.

These sites allowed people to post links to content on other sites which they found interesting. Others would then vote either positively or negatively on the submissions, and depending on the value of votes each submission had, those with higher scores reached the front page. Thus, with one look, people could tell what sites were hot, and if it applied to their own interests, they could then follow links to that particular site. Some communities even have a tag system which allows users to find items that are relevant to what they are looking for, and as a result make it even easier for them to look for content. Combined with RSS, it became easy to customize a stream of news items and updates according to individual users’ tastes.

As demonstrated by the various presentations we have seen in class, social media is also an entirely viable platform for business. Blogshops have become highly popular for the average person because of the ease of use and ability to reach out to many customers with the power of sharing, and even big companies have caught on and made use of social websites like Facebook to reach out to their customer base.