The Oxford Social Media Convention, which begins today in Oxford, England has the theme, “Assessing the Evolution, Impact and Potential of Social Media“. Now this is a convention I would have loved to attend. I have been to a couple of conferences, as I am now in the early beginnings of my career. One of which was the annual BC Library Association conference, and the other was the Public Knowledge Project conference on scholarly communications. Both were very informative, but I just can’t help to think that a social media convention would not only be informative, but really a lot of fun as well.  I would love to hear the history of social media, and examine the tools we are now using from an academic perspective.

In Kara Swisher’s blog, she posts about her upcoming experience at the conference, and touches on the issue of change. This is something I continue to hear time and time again, the issue of change. Personally, I don’t see what the issue is, but I have a feeling I can blame my generation for that. Kara talks about the perplexity many have over the growth of social media, and the evolution of a tool that many still cannot imagine. However, I see it as only a logical progression. As I said before, I do enjoy examining the growth of social media from an academic perspective, but at the same time I think sometimes the academics forget to change their thinking. When looking at social media from a users perspective, its growth makes perfect sense. When looking at the growth from the perspective of numbers or from a scientific aspect, the results are astonishing.  This change in the way individuals, scholars, politicians, and the like, are communicating could be an issue to many, but for those of us that are growing and adpating with the change, it is just evolution. It is evolution of the internet that we have seen from a young age, it is evolution of the way we communicate with one another, and it is evolution of our thought processes. In my opinion this change is not an issue, but a practical progression.

I suppose the fact that Facebook has now grown to over 300 million users since it was first introduced in early 2004 could be seen as surprising to many, as this represents an incredible growth rate, especially for a product that only uses word of mouth advertising.  For generations where it used to take awhile for things to catch on, I can see how this change could be seen as an issue. However, for those of us who have participated in social media from the beginning, I would say it is no surprise, and not as much of an issue as it is an excitement. It is very exciting to see every area of the world participating, creating, and sharing. When we begin to look at social media from these perspectives, rather than as issues or fears, it becomes much easier to see the advantages of the tools social media provides.