The term ‘social networking’ is on a lot of lips at present – from university graduates through IT specialists to pro audio and A/V companies, and most acutely, broadcasters. A subject that, until only recently, was the preserve of anthropologists, sociologists and other academics, has now become mainstream, with direct relevance to our personal and professional lives.

Such is the impact of social networks, a recent revelation by a group of UK divorce lawyers cited Facebook as a factor in 20 per cent of the country’s divorce cases. Meanwhile, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is the central character in a Golden Globe winning and Academy Award nominated Hollywood drama. You couldn’t make it up…

Much has been written on the subject as a science since the 1930s, but it is with the arrival of the internet that social networking has taken on a dramatically new significance. This is now moving up a gear, with broadcasters’ integration of social media services into their programme formats.

Today, what was once academic acknowledgement of our social structure extends beyond our unwitting involvement in social groups of people, to determining the way virtual networks are established and operated – on an unprecedented scale. The long arm of the internet allows us to contact and interact with people that would otherwise be completely beyond our reach. And with this, our friendships, knowledge and influence extend way beyond previous limits.

Although the so-called ‘rule of 150’ asserts that the size of a genuine social network is limited to about 150 members (a prohibitively low criterion for most internet-based groups) there are countless groups exchanging information and ideas in a manner never before possible. Some members of these groups will never meet in person, and that is the point – this is about communication on technological terms. More than that, it is about communications technology itself. For example, our ability to discuss some aspect of a broadcast or A/V installation with another consultant on the far side of the world may depend on the ability to share documents, images and software, as well as words.

With the implementation of Web 2.0 - taking the internet from being a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications – we have the ability to do this, and more. And we are.

Increasingly, news stories are spread through networks such as Facebook and Twitter. And many of them are about networks such as Facebook and Twitter – as can be seen in the use of voice Tweets to counter the shut-down of the internet in Egypt’s present troubles. Egypt had one of the most advanced telecommunications markets in the Middle East and Africa until the unrest in Cairo caused its shut-down. Joining forces, Google, Twitter and SayNow (acquired by Google only last week) devised a system that allows a voicemail sent to a phone number published on Google’s blog, to be published as a Tweet.

In Dubai, viewers’ Tweets are being used in a new programme format using the first use of never.no technology in the Middle East. And in Singapore, MediaCorp is readying its Over-the-Top service, which it believes will ‘revolutionise the way users watch television and use internet-enabled devices’.

As well as living in this brave new world, audio professionals have a hand in shaping it. Whether you are providing the A/V and comms network in a hotel or conference centre, designing new television programmer formats, creating music or video programming, or designing the equipment involved in almost any aspect of professional media, you have a direct influence on how tomorrow’s social networks will be formed and will operate.

That’s quite a responsibility we have…

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