One of the sectors that the internet has affected quite extensively is that of socializing and information dissemination and sharing. The transfer of information from many different sources globally and the speed with which a little known story becomes big news is blindingly fast now thanks to the internet.
This has been accomplished via the regular means of information sharing online. These include email services, blog sites, regular news websites and Instant Messaging (I.M.). However, there is an additional means that has been the sole cause of the boom in news and information sharing online. This is the social site.
With many examples ranging from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Bebo, social sites are the new online meeting places were all sorts of information is shared. The legitimacy of the information shared is often questionable and the presence of gossip is inevitable. However, the effect that these sites have had on the news reporting and dissemination frontier is unquestionable.
Statistics announce that revenue from news released and related online has actively overtaken revenue from newspaper sources. Moreover, over 27.8% of individuals claim to get their daily dose of news from social media sites. The numbers are growing and social meda is taking over. It is so prevalent that according to statistics, news directed to news sites that has been sourced from social sites has increased 57% in three years.
The effect that social media is having on society’s receivership and appreciation for news is apparent. With this in focus, there are new social sharing sites cropping up each and every day. One of the latest offerings in this horizon is a social photo and story sharing site known as Pinterest.
The site offers users the freedom to pin photos and stories about these photos on a personalized online notice board of their own. The site has also created a toolbar that allows users to pin photos that interest them while surfing the internet directly with one click.
The notice board can be divided according to the general content of the photos shared on each particular pane. One can have a section or page of the board for family photos, another for travel pictures and another for photos you have taken with your friends.
These are all easily customizable and there are options for sharing photos with users of the same social site. The site also has the very unique feature of allowing for the combination of pages to come up with one or more comprehensive albums featuring pictures about the same experience from different users. The toolbar has a button named ‘Pin It’ that allows for direct pinning of any photo one comes across while surfing the internet.
