Social Media Hopes

It’s refreshing for me to think about the fact that we all now have a voice that matters. Each and everyone of us has the ability to say what we feel, whenever we want.  Social media has opened up the flood gate of expression and emotion.

The hardest aspect of grasping social media is looking beyond just the software.  When it comes down to it, Facebook and Twitter are just applications.  They are means to the communication, not means to the end.

Will these platforms be here 5 years from now?  Maybe, maybe not.  It really doesn’t matter.  But, I do know something will be here, because we are in an unregulated age of expression.  Each and every one of us has a voice in a way we never have before.  To not use it would be foolish.

Social media is healthy communication.  It’s freedom of speech at its finest.  It’s added transparency to our world which we’ve never had before, which will only increase with time.

The tipping point is behind us.  Social media is here to stay.  We are, and will continue to be, connected all the time.  The internet is everywhere, and the price to connect is slowly dropping to zero.

Availability is at our finger tips.  Usability is now bred from a young age.  It’s never been this easy to connect.  It is a powerful force.  We’ve never before been connected as social beings the way we are now.

The conversations are staggering, and can tend to be overwhelming if you are searching for a single opinion on anything.  The data is dispersed and wide-spread across blogs, microblogs, message boards, comment feeds and elsewhere on the internet.  The beauty of the social media landscape is that it has given many of us an easy, open and fearless communication outlet.  It hasn’t always been this way.

Imagine an economy where we actually know, right now, what the investment banks and government policy makers are doing about the financial problems in our country.  And we’ll know not because we are peaking over their shoulders, but because they are actively telling us.

Imagine an economy where we can break the ties between corporate business and their monetary relationships with biased media because they’ll realize what we say matters more than what they say.

There is a movement to be led.  And, that is my ultimate hope for social media.  That’s really why I care.

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