The Rise of Social Networking
In 2005, a new blog was created each 7 seconds and around 12 000 blogs were added to the Internet every day (Robert MacDougall, 2005). Those numbers have done anything but rise during the last years. So, why this unexpected rise of this networking activity took place during the first decade of the XXI century?
As an influential report predicted ten years ago, ‘new technologies were set to increase our capacity to interact’ and this capacity ‘would create new ways to configure businesses, organise companies, and serve customer’. Nowadays, the Web 2.0, in which social networks and blogs are based, has become part of the daily life of an enormous part of the population in developed countries. However, this rise, although faster, did not happen all of a sudden.
The first stage can be founded back in 90’s. From 1995 onwards, the emergence message boards, on-line forums and, in general, the sense of on-line community took place. Despite it was nothing in comparison to the social networking we find in our current societies, it could be regarded as the seeds or the modern ancestors of such tools as Facebook or Twitter.
From 2001, the concept of blog has become part of our lives and five years later, in 2006, we started to speak about social networks. This evolution in the ways of communication also affected and, therefore, can also be applied to journalism. This technology promoted the rise of citizen journalism to that extent that we could say there’s a Fifth State, which is complementary to the traditional news outlets (Nic Newman, 2009).
I would say that in accordance to Newman, as some fears (read more) disappeared in traditional media, well-known traditional news sources as The Guardian or New York Times have started to speak about the great opportunities that networks offer. Social networking and citizen journalism, together with established traditional media, is not the future of journalism but its present. Too optimistic perhaps, but probably the history is repeating…
