Social-Media

**Intro to Technology Development - TEM194** ** Social Media ** Trevor Wolfe

Do you partake in the widespread phenomenon known as social networking? My guess is that you do along with millions of other people. In today's world, social networking is a necessity that allows us to complete a variety of tasks. These tasks can range from talking to your, friends to advertising for your business. Social networking is still at its youth as there is much more that can be done with it.




 * Social Networking **

Dating back to the late 90's, social networking has vastly improved over the past decade. From 1997-2002, social networking began to flourish with the introduction of SixDegrees, Makeoutclub, and Friendster. After this came MySpace (the former leader of social networking) and LinkedIn in 2003. Since then, MySpace has fallen behind as competitors such as Facebook (the king of social networking) have gained real traction in the past 5 years.

With over 800 million active users Facebook leads the way in a world of social networking. While Facebook has enough users to occupy a country, it wasn't always this way. Initially launched in 2004 as a service for Harvard students, Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerburg and college roommates. Over the years, Facebook extended its reach to other college campuses, high school students and then major corporation employees. Over the next few years the popularity of Facebook exploded across the globe making it the top social networking site in the world. While Facebook is still enjoying its reign as king, competitors such as Twitter and Google's new social networking site Google+ are making leaps and bounds to try and catch Facebook.

Twitter has shared very similar success to Facebook, but only has about 1/3 the amount of users. For those of you who don't know Twitter is a social networking site that is mainly used by celebrities and companies to 'Tweet' to their fans and customers. A tweet is similar to a status update on Facebook, but shorter. While Facebook and Twitter are enjoying their success, recent competitor Google+ has already gained 65 million users in its' first seven months. While, Google has really created an innovative product in Google+, it will be great to see the new technology that comes about from its competitors. A few cool features that Google+ brings with it are "circles" and "Hangouts". By using circles you can group your contacts accordingly, so the different circles will see different things. Hangouts on the other hand allows you to have group video chats with up to 9 friends. Sure, these are all cool features, but how are they useful.

Features such as Google's Hangouts are the future of communication, in business, schooling, and our personal lives. Can you imagine the amount of collaboration this will allow us to do in future years. Personally, I think that it will be super useful in ASU Online classes because it allows you to see and talk to the people you are collaborating with. Within the next decade I think online schooling will skyrocket. By that time webcams will be a necessity as video conferencing becomes more and more popular.

While Social Networking is a large portion of Social Media, there are other products such as YouTube, Blogger, and Wikipedia that also play a great role in Social Media. YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google and is used to upload and watch a variety of different videos every day. Blogger, also owned by Google, allows users to create their own blogs and share them with whomever they like. Lastly, Wikipedia is an online Encyclopedia showcasing over 15 million articles that can be edited and created by anyone with a Wikipedia account. Studies have shown Wikipedia to be as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica.

As our lives become more entwined with the internet we continue to innovate and create great products such as Facebook, YouTube, Google+, and Twitter.

**Jobs**

The job market in Social Media is rapidly expanding as Social Media is becoming more and more important in the business world. These jobs range from being a Social Media marketing specialist to a Blogger. To be highly qualified for jobs in the Social Media field it is best to have a background in computer technology, journalism, or marketing. Although this field is relatively new, there are decent full time salaries ranging from thirty thousand to six figures. The outlook for jobs in the Social Media career field is great and a great way to get put yourself out there is to create a LinkedIn profile. Founded in 2002, LinkedIn was created as a social networking site for business. LinkedIn is a great resource because it allows you to create a profile and upload your resume. It is a great tool for selling yourself to businesses and getting job interviews.


 * Degree **

A good program for those interested in the Social Media career path Technological Entrepreneurship & Management


 * The Social Media Revolution **

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**External Links ** Facebook Blogger  Google+  Twitter  LinkedIn  MySpace  YouTube