Social Media: Is it Just a Fad?

No matter how you feel about social media, you have to acknowledge that it’s happening… in a big way.

It might seem like all those Facebook updates and massive amounts of re-tweeting are all just noise, but in the grand scheme of things, these tools are changing not only the face of media, but marketing, advertising and simply the diffusion of information.

Last summer Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business, wowed the web with his “Social Media Revolution” video. But even in less than 12 months, how social media works and how we use it has changed. So last week Qualman put out “Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh),” a second version of the video, with hot new, eye-popping statistics, like:

• 96% of Millenials have joined a social network
• 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 brands are links to user-generated content
• 60 million status updates happen on Facebook daily

Now of course there are a lot of discussions back and forth on the benefits of social media (obvious downfalls are more time in front of the computer and less time actually being present in reality), but think of it this way: with the help of social media tools, an independent media source like Elephant has the power to push its solid content out across the web and around the world.

Spreading a message is now doable by everyone, including the underdog. And I can’t argue against that.

Now get back to tweeting…