The Social Media World Forum last week had me pondering a lot of things when it comes to the ways in which we as people communicate with each other on practically an hourly basis (and that is even being generous). We constantly need to see what other people are saying, not only to us but to others. When it comes to social media websites, this can mean communication to everyone or no one at the same time. While social media is a great new tool for marketing and PR companies, it is also a fantastic personal tool, hence the “social” aspect of it. Take a look at your facebook “friends.” I would hedge a bet that the percentage of people you actually talk to (in person or on the phone) on a quarterly basis would be around 25%, even less in some cases. The fact is we are fascinated with the idea of seeing what other people we sort of know or knew a long time ago are up to.

What I see as the main idea under this is that we all have a strong need in this day in age to be connected to everyone we possibly can in any medium we can get our hands on. This be twitter, facebook, linkedin, foursquare, email, skype, ect… (the list goes on). Think about this scenario: you are traveling to multiple countries without your laptop. You have a cell phone that does not have internet or any other way to connect to social media sites (i.e. text). You will be gone for at least two weeks. How much do you think you’ll miss online? My guess is a ton. We go even eight hours without checking in to facebook, twitter, ect…, and we have missed hours worth of communication. There is no way we can keep up with the barrage of information that flows every second on these grand social media sites. Even I have experienced the harsh effects of communication withdrawal, and this is being without internet access for close to ten hours.

To go along with this, I read the other day that facebook topped google as the most visited site for a week (7-13 of March). This means that facebook is now the most visited site in the world. And to think that I was just arguing that google was the new force to be reckoned with. Looks like google buzz isn’t anything to “buzz” about. But this just goes to show you how much people yearn to be connected to their online community. We not just checking facebook or twitter once a day, we are checking it about as rapidly as we check out email, even more so. We are addicted to the idea of being connected. We need to have the newest news story, the fastest sports update, the quickest response time; instant everything. News stories that may be hours old seem, well, old to us in this age of “quicker than instant.” Now the question to ask ourselves is, “how would we live without it?”

Advertisement