Social Media: The Viral Revolution

"Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do." --Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, p. 7

Social Media has ushered in a communications revolution. Every day, we contribute to an information stream of multimedia memes and sound bites that is part of a historic shift in technology on par with the invention of the printing press, photography, film, radio, and television. We have adapted so quickly and so seamlessly, it is difficult to imagine a world before Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Is is becoming increasingly clear that the technology itself a viral phenomenon. Marshall McLuhan famously wrote "The medium is the message." As applied to social media the message itself has viral qualities.


In this second clip, Harvard Economist Yochai Benkler, Author of The Wealth of Networks (2006) discusses Internet economies of information and influence. His ideas have been influential in acknowledging and measuring the power and growth of Internet economies of information. While the book is published by Yale University Press, Benkler, a Creative Commons advocate, offers the book as a wiki-esque learning experience for free via wikimedia. (click on title above to access...)