If we haven’t already hit the boiling point, we are really, really close. Social media has seen itself transform from something of a cult classic/underground oddity, from LiveJournals and Myspace, to the point where now if you aren’t “on” Facebook, you are looked at like you just stepped out of a time capsule.
So allow me this one moment to speak to my generation, Millennials – we’ve arrived. And to think, all that time spent on AOL AIM, scouring for code to simply change the color of a user profile, was just the starting point. To the younger generations, this is a moment they have no gauge for (no offense), and to the older generations, they are still looking around their walls and tweets in wonderment. To us? We’ve been here for years. This is nothing new. But we aren’t naive enough to think that nothing is at stake. We get it. Social media is a big deal now, and now we are the ones who should/need to attempt to keep the internet “cool.”
So now what? Facebook is projected to hit 1 billion users this year, yet ultimately plateau in growth. Twitter equally has become a necessity from a real-time perspective; just look at Bin Laden’s death for an example of how Twitter has changed the way news is shared and consumed. Gone are the days of receiving a call from a family member or seeing it in the paper the next day. It’s already old news. But if you didn’t already know that, you are already late.
With the majority of the world on social media in some capacity, our virtual identities need to be reaffirmed. Enter this “second tier” of social media. These are networks and apps that aren’t going to be knocking down Facebook’s door anytime soon, and that’s a good thing, because they don’t want to. These are services geared toward individuals who want a more, for lack of a better word, intimate social media experience. They don’t need a wall, a thousand friends and a news feed filled with grade school classmates getting married way too early (is that just me?). These are just a taste of some of the services you can look to for beating the crowd. Continue reading…
