In the natural world, evolution is normally a response to changes in the environment which forces adaption to the change by natural selection. If the change event is dramatic or violent life forms can become extinct before adaptive evolution can occur.
But what happens in Social Environments, Platforms, particularly virtual Social platforms. Does change and evolution happen gradually or catastrophically? And what happens to the inhabitants of that environment? Do they all migrate to the next ‘BIG THING’?
Any suggestions?
I think the key driver is the evolution of the social networking tools and not the communities themselves. As tools change, so do the kinds of communities using them. Today’s Twitterati would not always be yesterday’s mailing list discussion groups, yet the pundits would grant the newly emergent twits greater populist bounce, largely because of the effectiveness of the communications tools used, not because of the quality of the new channel of communications.
I’m still trying to decode the Social Media buzz words, give me minute 🙂
Leave it to The Onion to exaggerate an answer for you.
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/internet_archaeologists_find