In an era where technology seems to simplify almost everything, activities on the go have become and will continue to be the “order of the day”. Powerful inventions, advance tools among others have made life a bit easier. Sharing has never been easier in the old ages but now.
In our modern history of web-based sharing, everything falls on the tips of the hands of the vast majority of modern folks, especially the young ones so to speak. Technology has really done some a lot in human history. We are now in a world where interacting, publishing, connecting and reacting have become the things that we do with little efforts unlike how things were, during the days of our elderly fellows.
They say, “It’s because of the growing popularity of Social Media“. Well, the term Social Media means a lot than just a compound word. No, it goes far, there’s more to it than what you know or think. What then is Social Media? Social Media can be redefined as Social Mediums. Social has to do with communities, both virtual and real, that foster introductions and connections between people of related or different profiles (backgrounds).
By this meaning, the term Social engulfs the scope of communication or interactions between people. The means of communication may include shared activities or resources in a given environment, and as such, social interactions as an activity goes through a particular means, resource or channel. This idea of channel brings about the word Medium.
This means a social channel (medium) is a social means of communication. Such social channels may include networks, computer-based applications and related online resources when we describe them in the scope of technology. These technological mediums are computer-mediated, that is to say, they go via connections between computers, usually by means of the internet.
There is a handful of social channels (media resources), but the vast majorities in our modern age are internet-powered. As such, when we make mention of ‘Social Media’ these days, we mean “Interactive forms of media that allow users to communicate with and publish to each other, generally by means of the Internet“.
The mention of interactive forms, and possibly, communicate (communication) brings the idea of sharing. Sharing includes the exchange of resources (texts, media files or documents) between friends. Text-based messages, photos, videos, audios and other shareable digital documents are the main means of communication on social media.
So, we create, we post, we like, we comment and we share moments or resources. These have become the tasks of the days on social media and we love to engage in the fun as it goes to the world. But wait, what about the trend of sharing? Read that in my next article.
