The Narcissism of 21st Century: Social Media Mithil Ajmera just wrote an article for the Ignited Minds.

Yes, even before my article reaches The Ignited Minds, a tweet would reach my followers on twitter and a status update would be updated on my facebook wall. Social Networking has become a part and parcel of our lives. Whether we are eating at a local food joint, or visiting the Taj Mahal , we update everything . Be it our views on certain governmental laws or a trivial incident, it is all there, EVERYTHING. Initially we clicked photos for memories, now we click it for facebook, pinterest, instagram and picassa. We wont go out on streets to support Anna Hazare in the campaign, but like a status or comment on a few revolutionary pictures to show our support. Mithil Ajmera just wrote Many Many happy returns of the day hero on the wall of the birthday boy. Yes this is the trend we follow these days after getting reminders from Tagged; not the traditional meeting up or calling. And yes, when it comes to partying, we expect ourselves to be tagged in the photos of the album MY BIRTHDAY . Maa dint let us watch TV during exams to make us study, its the turn of Social Networking websites now! We may hardly ever agree to this fact , but most of us are obsessed with Social Media ;in fact more dependent than Obsessed. For good or bad?? only time will tell that! Social Media originated with geocities . Launched in 1994, Geocities offered a way for people to build websites and tell the world about themselves with postings and photos. Next in line was classmates.com in 1995, a website created to connect former schoolmates with one another .It still exists today but is overshadowed by Facebook. Then on, a lot of websites came along: Sixdegrees , LiveJournal, Friendster, but the revolution in social media was brought about by Orkut. The only difference between classmates.com and Orkut was Google. There was a lot of ballyhoo around Orkut, because GOOGLE, the web giant , launched it .But, Orkut failed in its growth period because of a difficult UI and rigid database bindings and architecture and guess who utilised its failure to an advantage??FACEBOOK. FACEBOOK may have made social networking a worldwide cultural phenomenon, but it wasn't the first internet company to connect people online. And it won't be the last. The late introduction of You Tube in this article was purposeful. You Tube came up at a time when most of the social networking websites were at its peak, but sustained. Reason??very simple..it made social media visual! It made video sharing easier and soon created one of the biggest database of videos online. It was soon bought by Google.

Social media is impacting our lives in every possible way. The first website we log on to after switching on the computer is a social networking website and if its blocked, we find proxies. An interesting thing that social media has also done is the penetration in the field of hacking. Sharing of personal information is not unusual on SNWs (Social Networking Websites) and hackers dont lose the opportunity to seep in the sensitive information on their hard disks. Cyber crime which originated in 1978 in the form of a spam sent over ARPAnet is considered normal these days. This figure of cyber crime crossed the 4 lakh mark in 2011 and is expected to rise steeply considering the amount of sensitive information people upload on the WEB. On the other hand, social media has changed the phase of businesses across the sectors, disrupting a few while mending many. Be it finances or marketing, WEB is the golden word in the 21st century. Creating websites, extracting content out of the Social Websites is the new in thing. LinkedIn takes a special mention in creating a tremendous network of professionals around the world. It is the biggest professional network on the Web. Marketing through social media is a big boom these days. Those little spaces on the right hand side of the screen on facebook generates a lot of revenues for them . Not only facebook, all the famous websites have screen space dedicated for advertising. Social media is the top of the mind thing for the digital marketers. Finding out a workable social marketing solution has become the holy grail for todays chief marketers. More small businesses are beginning to understand how to best leverage online tools to build a community and recognize that engagement and interaction are the foundations of social marketing. Social media usage by small business owners doubled in 2009 and rose again in 2010. This avid interest in social media marketing can be seen in the rapid adoption rate among INC 500 companies.

91% are using at least one social media tool 80% have a company page on a social networking site 79% post status updates or articles of interest on social media sites 57% build a network through a site such as LinkedIn

54% monitor feedback about the business 65% maintain a blog 52% are active on Twitter 93 percent of people active online fully expect companies to be present in social spaces and be willing to have a conversation with them. However, as companies and organizations feel their way with this new medium there have been some high-profile missteps in the field of online PR and social media and its vital that every PR agency and in-house practitioner learn the new rules of online PR so that they can correctly involve their clients and companies in the online conversation and be able to measure the success of these social media activities. Truly one of the biggest revolutions of the 21st century has been the Social Media. But now lets look at the other side of the coin! Apart from being the biggest visibility platform alongside television Social media offers amazing connectivity across all platforms and around the globe. But this advantage also turns out to be a disadvantage! Lets face it, people use social media because its so easy to connect without having to leave the comfort of ones home. Now, this self-same pro can become a con for your business because you would have to go the extra mile to convince people to meet you in real time. You could sell and promote your product or service online, but in certain businesses like insurance, sales, medicine, etc., demonstrating your product or service face-to-face is a must. If you create too much of an online presence, people might think that is all you are good at. You like someones wallpaper or a status or a quote and the next thing you do is ctrl c , ctrl v and there you have it in your profile. Imagine if we copy such small things online, what can happen to sensitive information! Internet privacy laws are still experiencing birthing pains, so there are a lot of grey areas which can become spring-boards for defamation, libel, slander, plagiarism, and other cases concerning privacy. If you put up something on the Internet for people to see, there is a huge chance that anyone can rip off what you have put up. There are ways to prevent this from happening, like putting watermarks on your images. However, people who are hell-bent on taking advantage of other peoples work will not balk at ripping off something from you, anyway.

Too much Information has been the bane of many social media users. Posting not-safe-forwork pictures, incriminating information, or a statement which is politically incorrect or offensive, can ruin your reputation even if your product or service is very, very good. So the best advice for you is to post with common sense, and post with caution. Now, a not so famous word Cyberbullying. Not many would have heard of it, but yes this is something which is on a rise since the last 3-4 years. Social networking sites make cyberbullying, easier and more public than bullying through other online activities such as email and instant messaging. A 2009 study found that 17.3% of middle school students have been victims of cyberbullying. Victims often experience a drop in grades, decreased selfesteem, and other symptoms of depression. Social networking sites entice people to spend more time online and less time interacting face-to-face. The sites offer many time wasting activities that supplant more productive activities. Teens spend an average of nine hours per week on social networking sites . Some important facts: 1. 3% of online sexual solicitors were identified as being adolescents (under 18), 30% were adults between the ages of 18 and 21, and 9% were adults over the age of 21 (as of Dec. 31, 2008). 2. Social networking and blogging sites accounted for 17% (about one in every six minutes) of all time spent on the Internet in Aug. 2009, nearly three times as much as in 2008. 3. Twitter was so important to the Iranian protests after the Iranian presidential election in June 2009 that the US State Department asked Twitter to delay a scheduled network upgrade that would have taken the website offline at a busy time of day in Iran. Twitter complied and rescheduled the downtime to 1:30 am Tehran time. 4. On Nov. 3, 2008, the day before the US presidential election, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama had 2,379,102 Facebook supporters while Republican candidate John McCain had 620,359. Obama had 833,161 MySpace friends and McCain had 217,811. Obama had 384% more Facebook supporters and 383% more MySpace friends than McCain.

5. Russians spend more time on social networking sites than people in any other country, an average of 6.6 hours per month compared to the worldwide average of 3.7 hours per month. Social Media is a norm for everyone these days, be it any age group from teens to the pensioners. It is becoming attention seeking by the day. The obsession is at its growth phase and the fixation has just begun. Social media is the Narcissism of the 21st Century.

-Mithil Ajmera Contact: 08454848083 Email-mithil_ajmera@scmhrd.edu