The gears of social media have been rotating at an amazing rate. I can admit, even as a “net junkie” that the level of change and movement is almost alarming. In the last few years, blogging has taken up a spotlight for how people are learning to interact online. However the blogging craze is nothing new, in fact most of the technology (if not all) has been around in some shape for twenty years.

Rather than recreate a definition, I am going to refer to Wikipedia’s entry about what social media is:

Definition: Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words and pictures. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning, as people share their stories, and understandings.

Description: Social media use the “wisdom of crowds” to connect information in a collaborative manner. Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, message boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video. Technologies such as blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, group creation and voice over IP, to name a few. Examples of social media applications are Google (reference, social networking), Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Facebook(social networking), Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing), Second Life (virtual reality), and Flickr (photo sharing).

The interesting part of this definition from Wikipedia is that Internet Forums, Message Boards, Instant Messaging, Blogging, and even some less graphical interfaces existed for years. Originally all this “blogging” craze started in the early 80’s with Usenet groups and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS).

I believe that most people would be led to think that there was some “miracle” of technology that created blogging (perhaps we could blame it on Myspace or something), but the truth of the phenomena relies more on the cultural change that has occurred.

As the generations of the 70s,80s, and 90s came into existence, society has been slowly seeded with individuals that grew up with the appeal of mass information. Even for children in the 80’s who grew up with Apple Computers and Atari’s, they are now a controlling demographic in many different aspects of our society.

One of the keys of maximizing this change for business is understanding the history.

In the next two to three years, we will see an accelerated application of many forms of online technology that spreads out into the real world through wireless services such as global positioning systems (GPS), mobile video, and cellular messaging technology.

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