Social media is the most important thing that has happened to the world in the last 15 years.
Starting from the heady days of the first sites that allowed people to connect with others (like Friends Reunited), it really has changed the game.
Is that a bit much? Well not really. Social media has been nothing short of revolutionary.
It frees up people's time, and puts information into the hands of the public.
Read a perspective from someone who has never been on social media networks
Knowledge has always been king. It's just that now the world is more connected, everyone can have access to it. Everyone can be a stakeholder and not just a passive consumer.
Who would have believed 10 years ago that you could find out what your old friend in Timbuktu was doing just by logging onto a website.
And as an expat, with friends scattered across the globe it becomes much easier to have conversations, and share happenings in your life that you would ordinarily procrastinate over.
Put it this way. 100 friends. Is it annoying mass group emails, updating your email lists constantly, massive file attachments, filtering out 20 different replies OR simply a case of updating your status or uploading a photo?
Not only that, but my professional life has benefited thanks to sites like LinkedIn and Twitter. Journalistically speaking, it's never been easier to have a conversation with your audience, to find other people in your field to share discussions with, to chew the fat with friends and foe or to find experts to help with stories.
And that's not mentioning the massive news resource that Twitter is these days – often the first source of breaking news in the UAE.
The caveat of course is always that it is a source, a starting point, a way of getting eye witness reaction or feedback but not always the full story. It's quite often a way in. As long as journalists remember that then they will be fine.
But for me, the best part about social media is in the name. It's social. A source of new and old friends but more importantly shared information and experiences, a gateway to new and interesting ideas.
If they say two heads are better than one, imagine how good 200, or 2,000 are.
If I don't know where to find a flange sprocket for my old car, I throw it out there on social media and more often than not get a response. If I'm heading off to a far flung destination, the chances are someone I know has been before and can offer invaluable advice or I can simply log onto sites like TripAdvisor to get candid real life opinions.
And as we all know in life. Nothing can beat a personal recommendation.
I could go on for days waxing lyrical about the potential for social media to change lives, to empower (politically especially – remember how the failed green revolution in Iran was ignited and kept alive by Twitter), but I also have to acknowledge that there are issues too.
When everyone is an expert and everyone has an opinion, then it is up to the individual to act as their own filter. And let's face it, social media is not just a tool for communication – it's a narcissist's dream come true.
Added to that, with the growth of 3G and mobile internet, it's all too easy to get lost in the chatter of the online world where the majority of what is out there is useless to most people. Unless you can learn how to sift through the junk to find the diamonds in the rough then you can find it hard going.
Sadly, because it has been revolutionary, it's also becoming ubiquitous. Realistically speaking there are only so many sites you can use constructively, but every other day there is social media this and a new way to do that.
I don't think saturation point is too far away. There is such a thing as too much information and too many experts.
But the beauty of the internet is that products can have a life cycle and need to prove their relevance. I have every faith that the future will see the most relevant sites survive and evolve to suit their audiences, with the useless chatter left by the wayside.
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