Social Media: The Storm of the Digital World

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Social media is captivating. Social media is overpowering and is, by all means, completely unpredictable.

However, we must jump back to truly understand how social media has taken the world by storm. A jump back to a time when Social Media was starting out.

Life Before Facebook: Prehistoric Times

Besides those of us who have to reply to emails for work, email was the OG tool. The email was where it all started. Back then, there was no connectivity. If you had an internet connection, you were lucky.

“A single click would take an hour. Downloads were the speed of snail mail, and streaming was practically science fiction.”

The first social media site came out in 1997 and was named SixDegrees.com. Some of you may not have been old enough to read, but you were there.

For those who do remember, let’s hold a minute of silence in remembrance of social media sites that no one remembers.

Did you know?

It wasn’t until 2005 that YouTube launched. Twitter launched in 2006, and Facebook took off after 2005!

The Current Scenario: Social Media Across The World

Zooming forward, five new Facebook profiles are created every second! Apart from the 60 likes on your latest DP, here’s what happens in one minute:

Over 15,000 GIFs are sent through Facebook messenger.
300 hours of content gets uploaded on YouTube.
16 Million Text Messages are sent.
Uber registers 45,788 trips.

Isn't it lovely? There are over 1 Billion active users on WhatsApp daily.

Within a minute, your entire world can change. In 2021, when Facebook servers crashed worldwide, Twitter encountered traffic like never before, and a single tweet started a viral loop of a gigantic scale.

Interesting Use Cases of Social Media: The Boons & Dangers

From ‘Baba ka Dhaba’ to Khaby Lame, we have genuinely transcended boundaries and have become part of the global population. It’s interesting to see how people log in from the farthest corners of the world and communicate with people on the other end of the globe.

Social media has no borders and it is both a good and bad thing. However, there are severe effects of social media usage too. We have seen horrifying cases of cyberbullying and a rapid increase in cyber crimes.

Everything becomes instant in terms of social media. Social media platforms are essentially ‘publish first and fast’. There's a constant need to publish content to stay ahead of the curve.

However, if done well, social media has the power to boost good content. There's a saying that good content finds its audience. This is how brands have effectively used social media to accelerate their growth by leveraging relevance with quality.