Social Growth

Social growth of the Internet has changed how we live our lives forever, those of us who thought our parents would never get the hang of using the Internet, were amazed as the urge to be part of the social development of the Internet pushed them to be part of the Facebook audience.

We all soon learnt how to keep in touch with anyone we wanted to.

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The most crucial of them all and by far one of the most popular. Facebook, outstripping its rivals bebo and Myspace. With 25 billion pieces of content uploaded every month, Facebook became a phenomenon with it becoming more popular to simply post your pictures online and tag your friends than print them out and put them into albums.

Facebook changed the Internet, with a massive 500 billion minutes spent on Facebook every month it has become the first and last thing people check when loading their browser, just in case they have a notification.

Since becoming such a massive part of people's lives more than 1 million sites have integrated with Facebook so that if you read an article, see a picture, watch a video or like anything on the Internet you have the option to click the 'like' button and share it with all of your friends.

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Twitter is an online social networking site that allows members to 'tweet' a text based message of 140 characters. Since its introduction in 2006 twitter has rapidly gained global popularity with 300 million recorded users in 2011 alone. Many celebrities have also began to use twitter to share what they are doing with their fans. This gives celebrities to communicate with absolutely anyone and paint a picture of themselves rather than the media or magazines having full control. As well as this Twitter has become another one of the ways people put themselves out there in an attempt to become famous. Getting yourself on a combination of youtube, twitter and facebook. People WILL start to learn your name whether they want to or not!

 With Twitter on our mobile we can literally 'tweet' our thoughts at any moment whether they are interesting, cruel or just plain boring. The question is, could what we post on our twitter feeds be seen as cyber bullying? Slagging of a celebrity, colleague or even your Boss seems funny at the time but could not only land you in a whole heap of trouble but could also be insulting and sometimes hurtful to the person your talking about. Below is a twitter post by JaackMaate, someone made popular through the insults he throws out daily...

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Steering away from Facebook and twitter and the whole idea of posting messages that people read in order to get to know you. Youtube offers a very personal way that people can put themselves out there so that you feel like you know them.

Youtube has in fact become such a constant source of entertainment for people that there is a television programme 'rudetube' that is dedicated to ranking the most popular youtube videos into genre's such as 'Animal Madness' and 'Total Stunts' as well as the fact it would take 600 years to view all the videos with 48 hours more footage being added every minute and roughly 200 thousand videos added every day!

The classic youtube slogan 'Broadcast yourself' is exactly what people have done with every day people becoming famous, such as Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber! People use Youtube to  do covers of songs, express there opinion, make fan videos, anything really!

 

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The easy to use instant messenger Skype has impressed us all with it's professional yet free finish allowing even the most technology inept of us to stay in contact with those closest to us whether that be our friends at nighttime or our grandchildren that have moved to Australia! With a massive 663 million users Skype isn't going to be being replaced anytime soon especially when the ability to have group conversations with video gives the more personal touch that we all like to have when missing someone.

VOIP (Voice over internet protocol) is slowly becoming something we are all very familiar with and is sure to become we will soon come to talk for granted. 

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Ray Tomlinson is quoted as saying he invented email, “Mostly because it seemed like a neat idea. No one was asking for email.” 

E-mail is by far the most used method of communication in business. With it's free and easy usability everyone has the ability to send messages to anyone they want. Since it's beginning in 1973 the text based messages we are able to send have increased in size as well as including the ability to add a picture, video, sound clip, document etc to the end of it. With many e-mail providers they now offer the ability to send instant messages to other e-mail accounts.

From a telephone call and letters to foreign countries, E-mail became possible because you could communicate with anyone all over the world in a matter of minutes. Keeping in touch with business's of course is a different matter. Where meetings and interviews still need to be in person the small details of organising times and places.

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Online Gaming has helped change the internet through a game consoles such as the xbox, playstation or the nintendo wii. Online Gaming allows users to meet other people and in the process make friends that they can play the game with possibly more frequently. This means is combines something entertaining with a social aspect

Below is a screen shot from the hugely popular 'call of duty'. These games allow for groups of people to get together and play either over the internet or in the same room. Different consoles are of course targetted at different types of social groups. So where 'Call of Duty' is targetted at boys and groups of guys prodominantly because of the fighting aspect of it.

 Where consoles such as the nintendo wii are targetted at both sexes or families, a much more cheerful side of gaming.

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Online Dating has become a new social hub for people who arn't confident enough to go out and meet new partners. An online dating site allows for many interactions before you have to dive straight in and meeting the person, which can be socially awkward. Unlike a blind date set up by that thoughtful friend a dating site allows you to talk to the person you would be meeting and find out if they are looking for the same thing as you.

Below is a print screen from the online dating website 'Zoosk' after being asked a considerable amount of questions about what you want out of the relationship, they match you to other people that want the same thing.

This sort of social growth of the internet takes away from the the interatactions we go through in life. This can mean that something that is designed to take away from social awkwardness could increase that very problem because people don't have to go out and meet people, and therefore become more computer dependant as a way to meet people.