Business and enterprise software, and other applications that help a business run

Day by day over the last several years, social media has been creeping into the lives of million of us. This addition to our lives, whether purposefully or not, has been doing an excellent job of preparing the way for our ultra-connected future computing paradigm. The various forms of social media, from Digg to Twitter to Plurk, have been burrowing into our lifestyles, changing the way we spend our time and how we view our lives.

Some of the changes wrought by the Web have been slow and steady, like our move away from shopping via catalog to shopping on line. Others have been lightning fast, like the adoption of micro-blogging on Twitter and now on Plurk, or the use of StumbleUpon or Mixx to find content that we are interested in. We are being ensnared by social media in more ways that we can imagine.

The people that are using social media heavily are a younger demographic, generally under 40. As the population continues to fill with computer-savvy young adults, the number of people online and involved with social media sites will continue to grow. And, as the social media site interfaces get better (a la Plurk) these sites get stickier, leading more people to spend more time on line.

All of us that participate in social media are being conditioned to spend more time on the web and less time in non-virtual pursuits. The feedback loops in social media are very strong. We are lured by knowledge, variety, and discovery every time we use StumbleUpon. We are drawn into the front-page-or-bust competitions every time we use Digg. We are drawn into instant friendships on Twitter and Plurk at every visit.

All of these avenues are used to sell to us by marketing professionals. There are, of course, the ads on the sites that we see, but there are also advertising campaigns being run every day on Facebook, MySpace, and StumbleUpon. As more of us spend more time on line, the use of social media marketing will become more profitable, and will therefore increase. That, of course, is no different than other pursuit in which we engage.

More tomorrow...