How do you think social media will change in the future? What other trends would you add to the mix? Are they any specific technologies that you think will gain popularity or emerge?

As someone else has already mentioned, in the future I think social media would evolve so that business people as well as people who work with social media will be able to have all of their things in one. By this I mean for example, how Facebook and Skype have already merged together while people are on Skype they can still connect to their Facebook. Instead of just this, I think in the future they will be able to put together a way so that multiple things such as Twitter, Skype, and Blogger etc are all in one. This could make jobs a lot easier for the people who work with social media as well as business people because instead of having a bunch of different places for these things would be easier to access in just one place.

Another trend that I would add to the mix would be all of the cell phone companies coming out with phones that are tablets too, like Samsung has recently done. This is similar to when I mentioned that I think social media in the future will merge together because they are already combining phones and tablets. I also think that this specific technology will end up gaining popularity from all the other companies that will try to do the same thing.

Through-out the future I believe that social media will continue to grow to make things easier and faster for people.

Do you think that social media has the potential to bring about real social change?

Yes, I believe that social media does have the potential to bring about real social change. Not only do I believe that it has the potential it has also proved that it does. Activists and groups such as "KONY 2012" give people the chance to be able to have their opinions/thoughts as well as share with more people around the world. With these thoughts and opinions people are able to attempt to make a change for the better. Even though the issue is pretty much half way across the world people are still able to feel like they are right there making a difference. Without this more people would be less likely to try and raise awareness for anything as it would take more work and time. The Kony 2012 has 20 different celebrities such as Rihanna and Angelina Jolie as well as around 12 other political figures. With people such as them tweeting and posting about it, it brings a big boost to trying to make a change. If these celebrities and politicians continue to do this then its gets the message across to a wider variety of people as well as get more people agreeing or going along with it. The whole object is to get Kony recognized. Before this starting spamming Facebook about 70% of people didn't even know who he was and now almost everyone does and is trying to raise awareness about him. Kony has been around for about 26 years and only a handful out of a bunch of people knew who he was, but then it comes to social networking sites and in about a day everyone knew who he was, his face and what he has done. That right there proves that social media does have the potential to bring about real social change.  

Do you think social media has increased or decreased the quality of news and information?

Social media has changed the world in many different ways including news and information. I believe that social media has increased the quality of news and information. I think this because the news and information get’s across a lot faster. Before social media came along people would get their news from a newspaper or TV. Without social media it would have taken people longer to find out things such as the earthquake in Japan. Life is a lot easier when businesses and companies are getting the news they want faster because then they are able to do what they have to do faster. It is clear that social media has increased the quality of news when more than half of people get there news from online. There will be more people who will end up using social media for news after time. When people read the newspaper and watch the news on TV t doesn’t give them a chance to respond or even answer. However, reading the news on social media site’s give you a chance to answer or respond by posting a comment. This gives the chance for people to feel as if they are apart of the news and not just the audience. Being able to do this also gives people a chance to edit or publish news that could be going on around them as well. This could be a bit of a negative aspect though because this increases the chance of false information being put out there.  Even though it has increased the quality of news, it still means that there are sites out there that are not so reliable such as a Wikipedia page since they can be made by just about everyone. Social media has pretty much become apart of our culture and will continue to develop in the future.

What is my perception on social media, is it a fad or the biggest shift since industrial revolution?

In my opinion I think that social media is the biggest shift since the industrial revolution but at the same time I also think it is just a fad. I think that it is the biggest shift since industrial revolution because businesses are now getting by and connecting with each other through social media a lot faster than they usually would have. There are a lot of people that depend on it for work and connecting with others etc. Although, because more people are connecting on social media, it is causing less and less people to actually have face to face interaction. At the same time I also think it is just a fad because if something better and more efficient comes along people will move onto that because everyone tries to keep to the most new and updated stuff. There is many positive ways to use social media, but at the same time there is also many negative ways that it can be used. People are able to advertise things to billions of people that they would have not been able to otherwise. This allows people to become “famous” for just posting something as simple as a video which otherwise would never happen before social media. Social media has changed a lot for people, some people tend to schuedule their day around it so they can do one thing then go back to it later. I also think that it has become such a big shift that there is people who are pretty much "addicted" to it and need to go on Facebook,twitter etc atleast once a day.