Week 16: Final Assignment

My view of Social Media has changed in that it is so much more prevalent than I even suspected. I knew that it was the up and coming way to advertise and communicate, but there is much more data and analytics behind the scenes than what I thought. There are ways to track and analyze who is liking, following and interacting with all of the different sites. And what is effective and what is not, even down to the time of day to do posting or ads.
Tracking everyone's moves on-line is very controversial. People can be traced by whatever sites the look at or click or engage in, and then that information can be used to further target them for an ad or marketing campaign. Some people love this, some people feel it's too intrusive. They even can GPS track you based on your location. For instance I was in a hotel in New York and the next think I know I had an ad review that was from that hotel and nearby sites to visit. I felt a little uneasy that this had occurred because it just shows how even our physical location is not private or anonymous anymore. Beacons in stores track your location within a store and target you for things you may be interested in or ads of what you are looking at.
Also, there is the trend for the younger users moving towards the shorter posts and quicker, faster forms of sites that don't have as much information and sometimes don't even stay posted for very long. It just shows how much technology has sped up society even more. Taking the time to read longer posts and even more wordy ads is less and less.
I love Social Media, that's why I chose this as an emphasis to get my Certificate in. It provides a way to stay in touch with friends, family, professional affiliations, job hunting and just getting information etc. And there is so much more information on anything that you want to know... you can just "search it" or ask friends or sites for input.
But I do think it has affected people's communication and communication skills. People are so tied to their technology that face-to-face communication is getting to be less and less. People don't visit or call as much, they text. Even emailing is getting less and less because it is more wordy and more time consuming. This is one of the reasons that Sales Rep jobs and retail stores are closing. People are buying on-line so much more it is putting companies and people out of business and jobs.
But it is here and growing and is not going away. If anything it is growing faster than most people can keep up. New sites pop up every day for everything you can think of wanting or needing. It has created gaps between the different generations that are very significant. And is shaping and molding the younger generations in new ways that the older generations did not have. They have been raised with technology and the speed of doing things, and this has affected everything including their expectations and work ethic. So it's something that all generations need to be aware of and stay on top of or get left behind.
Businesses that are not on some form of successful Social Media Platform will more than likely not do as well as those that are. And because it is interactive now, vs. one-way communication, there is so much more that people can do and learn from it. It is useful and exciting and fun, but there does need to be some sort of balance between using Social Media and the "old school" way of doing things, like meeting someone face-to-face instead of just a video chat or conference call. We need not lose perspective of real life person-to-person interaction and relationships.