Some might call the Bay Area the very hub of social media....Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+. And some other sites you haven't yet heard of but will make you feel bad next year because everyone will be using them except you and your 66-year-old Aunt who likes to forward you jokes about how incompetent the government is.
But I digress...
Social media tools, which are often used to disseminate news to a mass audience, became news themselves this year, begging the question anew of whether the medium is the message.
Let's turn to the KQED News Social Media Dude, Ian Hill, for a summary...
2011 might go down in part as the year social media established itself as an integral force in our society and our lives. Sure, you still might have logged in to check out a photo of your friend's dog or post about that great pizza you ate last night. But this year social media also was used to spark revolutions and push for societal change.
Palo Alto-based Facebook, recognizing this trend, launched its Timeline redesign to take into account major life events, including a user's birth. It also unveiled new social apps that can share what you're doing as you're doing it.
2011 also was a year of eye-popping numbers for social media. Facebook passed 800 million users, with 50 percent logging on daily. Google+, part of the suite of products from Mountain View's Google, launched in 2011, reaching an estimated 62 million members by the end of the year. Google's YouTube, based in San Bruno, announced that 48 hours of videos are uploaded to its site every minute. And earlier this month users of the San Francisco-based Twitter set a record by sending 25,088 Tweets per second in response to the television broadcast of a movie in Japan.
