Social media - Why?!

Why do we use social media? Or more specific, why do I want to use it? I have this blog and sometimes I ask myself what I can tell here to the world, that the world doesn’t know yet?

According to this article, these are the main reasons to use social media:

But another interesting quote to define the reason is this one: **“You learn by reading, you understand by using & you become an expert by teaching”.**And that’s perhaps the main reason why I have this blog: to write down things I feel are interesting and can help others with the same problems or questions. Once I have written something down here, it becomes a fact that I can get out of my head and see if starts to lead an own life on the web.

But there is more to it. This whole new ecosystem of blogging, twittering, sharing, etc. etc. is creating a new way of how organizations are working. Governments and companies can not just follow their own path any longer and have to take the consequences of their actions and products into account. The community now has a direct way of spreading their opinions. The Arabic Spring is only one example. In Belgium we now have a new bank coming up (NEW B) which is gathering civilians to get it started up. And of course there is the virtual money (BitCoin) which results in the fact that the traditional financial world is not the only “money maker” anymore.

Thanks to all these social tools, we the users, are in the lead and “If the people will lead, the leaders will follow”.