Social networking has taken a new turn – for runners and early adopters of the ‘beta’ services could not have imagined the global impact that social connectivity would have on the world today. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter receive millions of hits daily. Most social networks have rather home grown and humbling routes – this makes them even more open to social connection and adoption; they are not some frenzied corporate scheme to increase advertising but established by people who were enthused and inspired at the time to create something great. Social networking can hold many possibilities and although their intentions are not seemingly corporate – they can offer services to the likes of businesses as an effective form of advertisement.

Today we are bombarded with advertising in every walk of life. The adoption of the internet to communicate would eventually lead to the the natural use of online social advertising. Society has now developed online – we can live in our own cyber world – this sadly means that all of societies traits, either good or bad have also made the migration into the online field of cyberspace. Security is an ever pressing problem with social networking. The problems of identity fraud and the misuse of public data can worry some. To read more about security and Facebook’s woes click here for our article. Yet security measures are put in place a crack teams of cyber experts are working around the clock to ensure that our private data remains private. These issues would possibly be a problem for a small start up – but now with the likes of social giants growing ever more present in everyones lives we see the emerging and colourful uses that social networking can bring to our normal abode.

Twitter, one of the worlds most popular microblogging sites, is today celebrating its 7th birthday. Born from a frantic ‘brainstorming session’ by University undergraduates – Twitter was conceived as a short SMS messaging service and originally named twttr. Going from a private independent service for use in business – Twitter launched publicly on 21 March 2006. By the third quarter 2007 Twitter had received 400,000 tweets – a string of successful press and technology conferences had launched Twitter into the blogosphere. This later grew to 100 million tweets per quarter in 2008. The growth of social networking has been exponential in the last years. The adoption of Twitter by people from all 4 corners of the globe and walks of life has led to a diverse and widening cultural mix throughout the service.

Celebrities, politicians and media figures now all use Twitter as a way of instant communication, it provides a 24/7 method of communicating with every part of the world. Its growing use by individuals has naturally led it to be implemented in a wide spread public model – companies now refer their customer support through the likes of Twitter and TV shows instigate debates prior to broadcasting through use of the ominous hashtag (#). Personally I believe Twitter to be unique – it offers a truly welcoming and concise method of communication. Unlike Facebook were you may find several posts that resemble that of a work of Shakespeare – Twitter forces the user to be precise in their message to the world. This can lead to creative and rememberable uses of words and phrases in a positive way. Famously Twitter is known to limiting its users Tweets to 140 characters, users can also link similar posts with the use of the #, now a global symbol of social networking.

“There is nothing either good or bad but twittering makes it so.”

-William Shakespeare

Twitter now has a user base of over 500 million, this ranges from the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, to Bill Gates a well known technology innovator and philanthropist. Either way social networking is a wonder of the digital revolution. The people I have mentioned maybe famous but you do not have to be famous to Tweet, blog or use the internet. This is the magic of the internet. It provides everybody in society an equal footing and voice no matter their social status. Twitter and Facebook will continue to develop and grow, society will continue to communicate, it is the basic needs of humanity as a social species – just maybe not in 140 characters or less.