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Social Media: Are Families More Connected, Sharing More?
As an initial touchpoint for this post I want to point to a comment made recently by Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg. Talking about Facebook’s redesign at the Future of Web Apps event in London, he noted that sharing amongst people is growing at an exponential rate:
“One of the things that we have thought about at Facebook – we don’t have any conclusions on it yet – but an interesting historical analogy is Moore’s Law.” (The Law stated that the speed of processors would double every two years.) “And I wouldn’t be surprised, although there’s no definitive link yet, if something like that exists with the rate of sharing.“
This is a key insight and one that is being backed up by a Pew Internet & American Life Project on Networked Families. The report explores how parents and spouses are arriving at a “new connectedness” through the use of key social media enablers.
Read Write Web has a useful summary of the report. Yes, there is always the need for cognizant balance between work and play, face time and screen time, but on the whole we are able to connect more with family and friends, colleagues and compadres. I want to explore this more in a piece I am writing, but it seems to me that we are on the cusp of attaining a whole new level of sharing and connectedness.
I am amazed to see the level of interest in this blog post. Looking back four years after writing this post, the thesis that we will reach a “whole new level of sharing and connectedness” has rung true.
Consider how we are all so deeply connected via services such as RenRen, QZone, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many others around the world.
Consider also how today we are interfacing with our networks more and more on devices that are with us 24/7 – the iPhone and iPad, for me, have almost totally replaced my Macbook Pro. You may be on other platforms, but your basic footprint is shifting to more mobile devices.
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