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Social media had a number of significant implications for society, individuals, and businesses.
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Traditional news media outlets were in so many ways one-sided and gated. There were typically individuals who might be
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journalists, who might be public figures, who might be experts on subject matters deciding on what information
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should be communicated with the public from which perspective and at what time. Social media changed all of these
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dynamics. By creating an account, individuals now were able to communicate with others, talk about issues that
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might be coming from their own local region, talk about issues that matter to them as opposed to authorities.
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A number of factors played an important role in the growth of social media. The access to internet, the growth of
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broadband communications as well as computing devices such as laptops and eventually mobile devices became an
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important part of being able to access information. And as we were able to move to video and photo formats, social media
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became a much closer substitute to traditional media. In the later stages, as we developed cookie technologies as
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well as consumer data collection tools, we also learned a lot more about consumer preferences and interests. And
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this facilitated social media's ability to tailor content as well as advertising
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options to the interests of the consumers. We were able to now move to an algorithmic phase of social media
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where individuals were served content that were much better aligned with their preferences and interests.
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It's impossible for a brand to exist without having some degree of social media presence. By posting images,
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sharing information about products, many small and medium enterprises were now able to find customers were able to grow
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their businesses and this resulted in effectively a greater degree of competition in the business world. It
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has always been very important for businesses to listen to their customers, but in today's world, customers could be
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talking about a brand at all times. They could be talking about a commercial that's coming up in a Super Bowl. They
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could be talking about a delay related to the weather and how they were treated by an airline. And a brand, a firm needs
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to be at all times keeping an eye on these communications on social media. Moving forward, one unknown in the
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equation is the impact of AI on social media. These days, we no longer have social media only for humans. We also
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have social media platforms that are actually created for AI agents. And as we move forward, we'll need to keep an
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eye on how the presence of AI agents impact communication between humans. Second, AI can facilitate the creation
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of content that is fake but looks highly authentic and as such it might result in
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an ease of spread of misinformation. Looking at this technology 50 years from now we will remember many aspects. I
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think one of the most important aspects that we will remember is how this technology very quickly shifted our
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communication. We moved from one to one to one to many communications to many too many communications and we spent
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significant amounts of our attention or daily time on these devices from the moment we woke up till the moment we
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went to bed. At the same time we might remember that communication through social media did not result in closer
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social connections. Ironically as we communicated with higher numbers of people the more segregated we became.
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And this might be an aspect of social media that we will be remembering 50 years from now.