Introduction
By
Valerio Cirella & Mario Cirella1
This book offers the essential information about social media, it does not contain highly technical information or analytical formulas but, in contrast, it offers an explanation of the new communication system and also provides ideas to spark off individual researches.
I wanted to create a book that was simple, effective and brief; focused on analyses and explanations of social media’s meaning, the idea behind them, and the influence they have on people’s lives.
Social media (SM) system is a next step of the Internet evolution and it represents the result of the interaction between new communication needs and technology development (based on internet).
Many important events occurred in the USA in 1969. For example, the military operations in Vietnam, the moon landing, the election of Nixon as the 37th President of the United States, and the Woodstock concert. However, few remember that in that year four American universities connected their PCs together in one single network. This network was the civil implementation of an original military project, designed by ARPA (Advanced Research Project Agency). This military project had the purpose to keep the Pentagon information up and running also after a hypothetical nuclear attack from foreign countries. This because the multiple locations, connected each other, provided a solution of disaster recovery where essential data were stored in different places and restored if needed.
The Internet came years later when it became easier to connect networks using the TCP/IP protocol, and it became popular with the development of browsers and search engines.
Initially, the Internet was conceived and developed to connect only machines, and to allow the exchange of information to make jobs easier and economically convenient for companies. In just a few years, this technology affected company business on the one hand, and people’s socialisation, interests and mobility on the other.
Some people made a lot of money from the Internet, and new companies, were created, for example: Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google founders); Jeff Bezos (Amazon founder); Masayoshi Son (President of SoftBank); Pierre Omidyar (eBay founder and chairman); Hiroshi Mikitani (Rakuten co-founder and CEO); Mark Zuckerberg (co-founder of Facebook); Ma Huateng (founder of Tencent Inc.).
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1 Mario Cirella is a retired sociologist and a former telecommunication specialist. Between 1992 and 1994 he wrote news articles for three important Italian newspapers: “Il Giornale di Napoli”, “Il Mezzoggiorno”, “Il tempo”.
In 1996 was appointed Co-Editor of a local news magazine “Terra Flegre@” and in 2002 publishing editor of the local news magazine “City Planet”. In 2007 was appointed Social Media Strategist for the exclusive and private post-graduation school
A.I.P.P.I. Napoli.
Today he enjoys his retirement and, occasionally, he is invited as guest for social media seminars.
The Internet is only a technology, and therefore impersonal, but social media (SM) have changed this trait. SM category is made up of many ‘mediums’ (for this reason I will always address SM as a plural), which will be discussed individually in this book. They have enriched the ‘Information Age’ and they are pushing the society toward one based on ‘digital interactions between people’.
SM were created to support the circulation of information between people, who need to register their profile and prove their identity for the interactions. For example, it is possible to login to some websites, or sell products and services, using a personal Internet profile from another website (e.g. using the personal Facebook or LinkedIn profile). In order to keep and develop business and social relationships with hundreds of contacts, SM usage is growing because they are:
a) Handy;
b) Cheap;
c) Effective.
One different opinion is Solis, who stated in 2007: “Social Media is about Sociology and not Technology”. He sustains that any media, in general, exists because they are used for people’s interactions and, furthermore, a medium is developed to reach people and not an audience.
This book analyses this kind of statements and ideas, verifying the importance of technology and if it plays an important role in increasing the usage of SM. Nowadays, it looks like the development of technology supports the increase of the human interactions, for example: mobile phones and software applications, tablet computers, fast Internet connections, and the ability to send content as a combination of images and audio.
During my research, I found a very interesting quote: “We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.” (Qualman, 2010). In summary, the author’s message is that SM represent “the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution”. I completely support this definition because, as I demonstrate in this book, the implementation of SM has changed major aspects of our society and economy. They are so powerful that they can hurt or promote people and companies’ reputations, and change the quality of services or their perception.
Other authors, like Centorrino and Romero (2012) believe that SM have redefined communication in terms of time and space (distance), because they have created new places for meetings and a new way to interact, watch TV, listen to music, read a newspaper, or get an education or training.
Specifically, they are part of a group of theorists who believe that the Internet has compressed time and space (in terms of distance) between users, just as all previous systems of transportation have done. For example, when the railways were developed, they reduced the time and space needed to transport goods and people and, years later, the development of airplane reduced the two elements even more. This means that the progress and developments of technology contribute to reduce the importance and the role of Time and Space in the transportation system. Same analogy can be used for the communication.