What is the outcome of blending social media & technology?

Over the years where has technology taken us and how it has made communication so much easier? Is it good or evil? Social media websites have absolutely changed the way we get online. Whether it is MySpace page, a Facebook account, or a Twitter feed, these websites change the way we interact now.

How in seconds one can share their views, thoughts with the entire world as with previously shy people now share their sense of humor and, sometimes, shocking photos. Topics that might seem taboo in person are suddenly being discussed and debated in great detail. Technology has enabled people to connect wherein people who have not spoken in years are suddenly friends or followers and are hearing about the day-to-day details of each other's lives.

So where does all this lead us? Are we losing personal interactions & touch?  Or all this is just hype as we all heard about the 15-year-old schoolboy who becomes an overnight sensation after writing a report on teenagers' media habits for analysts Morgan Stanley. Whereby the schoolboy poured scorn on Twitter, claiming that teenagers 'realize that no one is viewing their profile, so their tweets are pointless. He also claimed games consoles are replacing mobile phones as the way to chat with friends.

So because the media by and large implies that every kid age 13-20 has a MySpace, Twitter and Facebook accounts, that they own a PS3, 360 and Wii. Basically what this report is saying is that Twitter is simply a fad. That it doesn't capture the attention of the people who presumably would be the next big adopters. How is this useful to businesses? Well, if they are targeting 13-20 year olds, they might want to invest in different advertising than on Twitter especially for the long term. But  there's the whole "internet community" who read a pile of overlapping blog sites and assume that the rest of the internet does too, so that a survey of those sites represents the views and priorities of everyone else. It's just the echo chamber effect. A teenager knows that this is how he and his friends use technology, so he assumes it's true for everyone else. So the report might be an interesting insight into how he thinks, but totally useless for anyone who wants an actual profile of his age group.

>Even though there may be some long-lasting effects from the advent of both these social media networks and technology like texting, overall the lines of communication will remain intact so in the end I am thinking will technology have an effect on our way of communicating? Absolutely. Will electronic communication replace in-person interaction? Maybe not in this lifetime…