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Welcome to Social Media Alive! This site has been inspired and facilitated by Sharon Crost, and developed for students by students as a pathway into the new communications channels of the 21st Century. It will help you explore the exciting, but sometimes confusing, world of social networking tools. There are many web-based tools that are free and readily available to help you communicate!
Over the last few years, the Internet has been bringing greater numbers of people together and allowing them to interact in ever more involved ways. Through the global reach of the Internet, diverse groups of people can be brought together by common objectives, goals and interests. As the Internet horizon extends, the tools that drive sharing and collaboration also develop at pace. Gone are the days when publishing could only be achieved by the lucky few. Through Internet technology, and specifically Web 2.0 as a communication enabler, everyone can be empowered to share their ideas with the rest of the world. By forming partnerships with individuals from different corners of the globe at the click of a mouse, the Internet allows a greater level of cultural access than was ever possible before. At the start of the decade when tools like Wordpress and MySpace were first released, they greatly simplified the process of updating a website so that practically anyone could do it. Since then, there has been an enormous growth in the online population reading and using these tools. As the speed of communication has increased, so too have our expectations of information. Blogging is increasingly being complemented by microblogging, small updates of people's lives brief moments in time. Twitter and Facebook enable people to keep up-to-date with one another through these tools. On the business front, the Internet is enabling companies to bring their customers further into the organisation, to crowdsource ideas and contributions and to offer enhanced customer satisfaction. By providing customers ways to easily become involved with the product and the service, companies are able to develop better products and services, and encourage stronger brand loyalty. This site is here to help guide you through the process of learning and undertanding how to use these tools, to help you practice interacting with websites within a learning environment and to encourage you to have fun as you learn! Hope you enjoy it! | 
