By Sunny Popali, Guest Contributor to TechAddiction

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in guest articles are solely those of the author and are not necessarily the views of TechAddiction and/or Dr. Conrad.

We are now in the second phase of the internet revolution.

In this phase social media rules the land. We now live in an age where we don’t have to look for news, it finds us. Actually it gets delivered to something even more convenient than our doorsteps – into our social networking timelines. News now is packaged with beautiful photos and relevant videos. Simply reading through the daily news headlines can take hours if we are not careful about the time. The experience of news consumption through social media is just so immersive – we don’t just read the news; we comment on it, interact with it, share it, and make it.

Pre and Post Internet Life

The internet itself is certainly the centerpiece of the digital age. Can you remember your first online experience? If you are young, the answer is probably “no” and it may be impossible to remember a time when the internet was not a part of your life. For older individuals however, there is a clear distinction between pre-internet and post-internet life. During its first decade of existence the internet was exclusive to large corporations who use it to communicate within these organizations. Having the internet at home was unheard of.

Further advancements in technology came and made the hardware available to the masses during the 90’s. Initially, we mostly used it for email. Then, as the number of websites rose it started to replace encyclopedia and books as the “go-to” source for information. Searching online for information and entertainment is now a part of our daily lives.

The Ascent of Social Media

The popularity of social media represents the next clear stage of online evolution. Recently Mark Zuckerberg stated that Facebook is receiving about a billion search queries per day on their social networking platform. Previously these searches were focused solely on finding people, but now social network searches are also being used to find general information – previously the domain of dedicated search engines.

Currently social networking sites are able to do most of the jobs that were traditionally done by separate platforms. For example: email, newspapers, photo and video sharing and more all used to be separate services in our browsers or locally on our computers. Now they can all be seen arranged neatly on our timeline and accessible to be discussed, shared, and liked by our friends.

There is no question that social media is the current king of the internet.

Changing the World Through Social Media

For most of social media’s short lived existence it has been utilized primarily by techies (as we would like to call them). They are the ones who are ahead of the curve in terms of what are the trends on the internet. The past few years, however, we have seen social media explode as its user base grew to billions. Households from all around the world now are taking advantage of the capabilities of social media.

In fact the power of social media has never been demonstrated more that in the hands of the ordinary people. If you’ve never heard of the Arab Spring yet then perhaps you’d like to look it up. It’s the term used to coin the wave protests that sparked demonstrations which spread across the Arab world. It is unrest of the people organized by social media which is able to topple rulers, corrupt institutions, constricting policies, etc. These demonstrations have shown the world the things people are able to achieve once they have the means of real-time, inexpensive, and relevant information at hand which connects us, allows us to share ideas, and allows us to change the world – for better or for worse.

Guest Author Bio

Sunny Popali is SEO Director at Tempo Creative. Tempo Creative is an Arizona Inbound Marketing firm that has served over 700 clients since 2001. Tempo's team specializes in digital and internet marketing services including web design, SEO, social media and strategy.

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The role of social media in real world change