Here is a nifty little graphic (click-through to see it in all its glory) from the BBC/Nielsen illustrating the ever-changing landscape of various social media platforms across the globe.
The rise and rise of Facebook seems to be the big story here, with the social network now being home to over half a billion active users, including almost half of the UK population! Obviously the recent privacy concerns and quit campaigns haven’t hurt the site particularly (I wonder if the forthcoming movie will..) but how long do you think Facebook can stay as the planet’s favourite social network?
The USA Today has produced an interesting article looking at the rise (and rise) of social media and networking amongst Generation Y, increasingly known as the Net Generation. If you’ve only momentarily broken away from Mafia Wars on Facebook, or tweeting on your iPhone, to read this post then I’m sure plenty of this sounds pretty familiar!
The article touches upon the buzz topic that is the Real-time Web, something very close to our hearts here at Moreover, although in part illustrating it as ‘the obsessive use of PCs or cellphones for quick interactions and dips into the online information stream’.
As Web 2.0 matures into the Web Squared, with the Web become more conversational, it’s no surprise that real-time search has fast become such a hot topic and social media has changed the way we communicate – any Net Geners out there struggling to switch off?!
ReadWriteWeb have posted a series of insightful articles on the growing trend that is the Real-time Web, in fact going on to include it in their Top 5 Web Trends of 2009.
As you would expect Twitter and FriendFeed feature prominently in the piece, especially when looking at the Real-time Web as a new form of communication. RWW explores how this new communication is different from email and instant messaging insomuch it is largely public and searchable, adding value as a wealth of information becomes quickly accessible.
As the Real-time Web changes the way we communicate, it also changes the infrastructure of the Internet. Online search is changing to include these new real-time streams and make use of their immediacy, in particular as we see the real-time expectancy grow to the Web as a whole.
Along with communication and its speed, RWW further suggest that the Real-time Web is defined by its openess and has an explicit social graph associated with it. The three articles make for a great read, so I’d suggest heading over to ReadWriteWeb for the complete write-up.
Web strategist and blogger Jeremiah Owyang observes how the nature of self publishing on the web is changing, with the traditional blog no longer the main vehicle for expression. Instead micromedia platforms like FriendFeed, Posterous, and Twitter make it easier to post more frequently, and are better suited to the sort of constant chatter we’re now seeing. Quick, easy and often, but not necessarily richer content.
That’s not to say that blogs are disappearing, rather the new lifestreaming-type tools are leading to specialisation of the media: Blogs are still better for posting original, rich content, the larger thought-through pieces, while micromedia is better suited for continuous comms and is now taking that function away from the blog.
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