The Social media revolution!

Hi everyone!
Today I am going to be discussing social media and how it is changing the way we communicate both socially and in the world of business.
Social media involves sharing thoughts, information and communicating with others over the internet. There an astonishing amount of social media sites available today, these include twitter, facebook, linkedin, youtube and many more!
The use of social media has eclipsed traditional methods of communication such as letter writing, phonecalls and to an extent even e-mail. There are a number of reasons for this, for example there are a such a variety of sites that users can engage with, as well as the global reach sites such as facebook have which means a person can easily communicate with friends and relatives on the the other side of the planet almost instantly.
Many people now have relationships with people they have never met through social media, this represents some of the risks associated with social media, information displayed on social media sites is readily available and a minority of users can use this information for illegal purposes.
We all know how social media can be used by individuals to keep in contact with and make new friends, but are we aware of the extent that social media is being utilised by businesses? More and more businesses and companies are now using social media to interact with their customers through facebook and twitter etc. It provides an excellent way to garner customers views on a product as the customer can give feedback on the companies facebook or twitter page. Companies can also gather a large amount of customer information on social media sites through surveys and on-line questionnaires.
As we learn more about social media we will begin to understand the extent of its reach and rewards its use can provide businesses but for now just watch this clip below describing the social media revolution thus far.
Thanks for reading.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eUeL3n7fDs