Social media is huge now. There are very few people who don't use it, even my grandparents are regular Facebookers. Some think it's a bad thing, that it is affecting the way we socialise in a bad way. Others, like me, think it is nothing but a good thing, making it easier and adding a whole new level of communication and added way to socialise.
I've seen a few posts on how the social media frenzy has affected a lot of aspects in life including printing so that's what I wanted to talk about. The positive and negative ways that Facebook, Twitter and other social sites and apps have affected the printing industry.
The most obvious place to start is a major one, photos! Before this online social rush, it wouldn't be rare for us to take photos with our digital cameras on print them out at home or get them printed professionally else where. It wasn't that long ago either, less that a decade I'd say.
But since the social revolution, no one seems to bother. It's so easy to take a digital camera out with you, get home and upload them to Facebook for all your friends and family to see. Even easier if you have a phone, you can snap away and upload them directly to Instagram (who also offer physical copies), Twitter, Facebook and every other platform out there. It seems that most people are not bothered about the physical aspect of photographs any more.
I couldn't say if this is a good thing or a bad thing because that's opinion, but I believe that it does have it's benefits. A physical photo can very easily be ruined or lost, but once your photos are on your phone, computer, Facebook, etc. it is a lot harder to loose.
There are a few printing advancements being made, for example that of the previously mentioned Instagram that offers a number of printing services including both stickers and postcards being printed from your own pictures, yet the market for this seems to be small. There is also the likes of Polaroid trying to make a come back but once again, I doubt there's much of a market there because of all the previously mentioned.
So what do you think to the decline of the Physical and the rise of the social and online? Is it good, bad, or just different? Let us know in the comments.
