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In this series of posts I’ll be discussing how social media as a channel continues to shape and impact our lives and how within a business context one can take advantage of it. Essentially it will use extracts and thoughts from my thesis and will weave in current and relevant trends and observations.

First though is a comment about the medium or platform social media sites uses to interact with us not so much the device but the network of machines which enables us to instantly communicate with each other. Effectively shrinking the world.

Since its creation with roots in the 60s, the Internet and World Wide Web (Web) continues to permeate our lives. It has become an instantaneous platform of interaction. Not only are we able to send and retrieve emails, transmit large volumes of data wirelessly but also communicate verbally and visually. Increasing user activity and Web functionality has underpinned the usage of social media as a communications tool. It is imperative we understand the trends and its implications, as this knowledge can be used to derive more effective interactions personally and professionally.

The Web continues to evolve into a multi-directional model of interaction. As this evolution continues we’ll increasingly be in an era of “The Internet of Things”. Effectively a period where increasingly everything will be connected to the internet. This next phase of development is underpinned by the implementation of Web 3.0 or the Semantic Web. It is about having data as well as documents on the Web so that machines can process, transform, assemble, and even act on the data in useful ways (Yu, 2007). This sequential development follows previous iterations of the Web defined as Web 1.0 (predominately consumption only) and Web 2.0 (increased interaction across websites).

Hope you found it informative.

The next post will discuss Web 2.0 and social media sites, see you then.

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