New Media & Society

http://nms.sagepub.com/content/16/1/5.full.pdf+html

I picked the article "From Facebook to cell calls: Layers of electronic intimacy in college students' interpersonal relationships" because it is very relevant to our generation. With all the new media and technology available today it makes its harder for people to create intimate or interpersonal relationships without technology. This article studied communication technologies and how they are useful to each stage of relationship development. They found in their study that a form of new media was tied to each stage of the relationship development process. The most interesting part they research was the relationship between the new media and technologies to the stages in the process from initiation to intimacy. They started to notice a pattern in expectancies and progression that, mostly females, look for using new media. Majority of college students are involved in social media or other types of new media technologies, it relates to our current lives. I found it interesting that they studied how we use media to create and progress relationships between one another. 

Reed's Law

In class we discussed several laws associated with networks. I found Reed’s Law most interest. Reed’s Law shows the power of social networks and the different groups that come together because of network affiliations. Reed’s Law is based off of group forming networks. Social media is more popular now than ever before. It is an example of a group forming network. You can even branch off of that into smaller groups with people who have similar interest. When subgroups are created, according to Reed’s Law, that is what creates value of the network. A larger network can scale exponentially with the size of the network. David Reed observed that the value of a communication network grows with the number of groups it supports. 

I found interest in this law because it is not based off financial. It is based on the amount of people involved in the network. Reed didn’t see financial transactions as a effective way to measure a network. What was important to him, was the groups that are supporting the network. If people did not use the networks, they would never be successful. Whether it made someone money or not. It is all about the people using the network and them getting use or enjoyment out of it. 

In five years from now I can still see social media being a dominate way of getting information.. We think the younger generations are attached now, I only seeing it getting worse. They are doing more and more for the consumer with every new product that comes out. Social media has become one of the more popular ways to get information today. I can see new networks being released that makes it that much easier to get all your information and communicate in one location. Basically, I see social media coming to its peak for gathering information.