Communications: Twitter and Social Networking Essay

Submitted By chelseagallagher
Words: 1701
Pages: 7

CGallagher 1
Chelsea Gallagher
10059146
Communications 201
3, April 2012

#9 Social Networking Media’s Impact on Human Communication Social media is that of web-based and mobile technologies that are used to turn communication into interactive dialogue, as well as to promote unlimited social interaction. Social media has changed and broadened the way individuals, businesses, organizations, and communities can communicate amongst themselves, as well as amongst each other. Before technology, and the modern advances people are blessed with today, people communicated through spoken word, relying on face-to-face interactions, also known as the Tribal Epoch. People attainted information through the telling of stories from previous generations, until the time of the Literate Epoch, when symbols allowed these people to communicate without a face-to-face interaction. The Print Epoch, the time of the printing press gave all people the opportunity to interact, or express themselves to a larger audience, as well as opening the gates to inventions, such as the telegraph, evented during the Electronic Epoch. Since these times, technology has clearly advanced, and expanded allowing people to use tools such as mobile phones, televisions, cable, and the Internet, or social media websites. People have always been social, however, today, because of social networking media, a business can promote themselves to other businesses across the globe, opening their cliental to a far greater audience, in a very short amount of time. People can meet, talk to, and learn about family members they were unaware they had. Social Networking Media promotes endless, and easy opportunities to both the work and personal environment by providing a greater,
Gallagher 2 more efficient network of communication. Social network media effects the communication used in businesses, as well as those used on a personal daily basis; however, the broadening of human communication, can allow people to access too much information, which means that the social networking too, has it’s positives and negatives. “Social media is about creating access to information that is on demand, on real time, personalized, and accessible anywhere.” Quoted by Jennifer Benz of Benz Communications. Businesses need to be able to attain information quickly, and in an organized matter. Social media networks are blogs, microblogs, wikis, and Internet sites such as Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, and Twitter, to name a few. Through these, or any other social networking site, businesses can communicate, and promote efficiently; the social networking media allows businesses, organizations, and anything on a professional level to promote access, awareness, communication and discovery. An experimental project called People & Projects is a social media network used across Alcatel-Lucent, a global telecommunications corporation, which simplifies a few important social behaviours as listed above, such as building collective knowledge, through “tagging” and “updating,” awareness through “following” and notifications, communication through “click-to-call,” emails, and texts, and discovery through the search and relationship graphs. Tagging is used to select things that one is interested in, as well as allowing people to categorize objects, or ideas, that other employees, clients, and companies can see. Following is used for those who, for example, are interested in a person; when the person who is being “followed” performs an action on the site, the person “following” them will the notified. This “following” application can be used to
Gallagher 3 follow a boss or employee’s actions. Every single one of these tools or social behaviours allows for greater knowledge, and communication. Jennifer Benz, a benefits communication expert states, “Using internal social networks can be a really powerful way to connect people and to communicate information about your benefit programs.”