MEDIA PSYCHOLOGY Critical Thinking: Social Media

Web squared

We live in some interesting times. The heart of social mediasphere – facebook, digg, twitter, del.icio.us, and many others, cause a buzz of exhilaration and certainly, many more ways for enterprising entrepreneurs to profit. Ideas circulate as fast as scandals. Potential consumers are sniffing around for deals and partners. Although free and most of them painfully primitive, blogs have power.

Online status
As traditional news media collectors continue to disappear and Internet becomes the prime channel through which the technologically advanced world searches for news, information, and opinions, entrepreneurs are planning how organizations should build their status online and how well equipped they are to make a digital impact on other companies. And the public. Chief executive officers are delivering digital invitations for Digital Impact Conferences led by digital thought leaders who teach businesses how to build online communications, to assess risks, and to ensure their future in the kingdom of digital communications. Some others are teaching how to sell social media to CEOs. While some of us are bravely marching into a world of Twitter, Wikis, RSS, and other current life advances, some are still being skeptics, and some, technologically challenged, are still living with old types of flip phones as an old, but good way of communication.

Figure shows "Meme map" of Web 2.0 that was developed at a brainstorming session during FOO Camp, a conference at O'Reilly Media. It's very much a work in progress, but shows the many ideas that radiate out from the Web 2.0 core.

Intentions
Social media is progressively influencing more and more public opinions and dramatically changi

ng families' and other relationships' dynamics. Some people are adapting to the changes, benefiting from different ways of increasing sales, gaining popularity, learning, or simply finding new ways to waste time on pointless conversations. There seems to be too many things covered under the buzz term ‘Social’ and that may be causing confusion and diminishing the real, positive Social Media intentions, and holding up progress. We may be stuck with wrong perception until the word splits and changes into several, more specific terms.

Twittering for ego
To add to the Social mix, just recently, huge media attention was given to Ashton Kutcher and his competition with CNN for Twitters. The immense publicity given to this event was considered overwhelming and irritating by some and it raises questions about today's social values. Ashton told Larry King that he initially used Twitter to feed his ego until he realized that he can use the service to make a difference. He had challenged CNN to the Twitter race, saying he would donate 10,000 mosquito bed nets to charity for World Malaria Day in late April if he beat CNN, and 1,000 if he lost. CNN agreed to do the same. Cherwenka, the Huffington Post blogger, believes that "Kutcher may be one of the first people to leverage the power of online social networking for widespread social good". The question is if this hype will turn into a new fashion or will irritate and disgust the existing and the potential Twitters.

Conclusion
Not only Ashton, Twitters, and Apple are investing. Companies have shifted a center of the marketing into the Web, some are still dwelling on Social Media side effects, but if we think that Web 2.0 is transforming the way people work, learn, and play, let's participate…