I'm at a party, hanging out with my friends, when all of a sudden, we hear brawling and shouting from the front of the house. We rush out, wondering what was going on, when we see two guys in the middle of a crowd, fighting. You would have thought the crowd around them would try to separate them, after all, isn't that what most people try to do when a fight's going on? Try to stop it?

But no, they've all whipped out their phones and camera's, avidly recording the scene before them. I stop and stare, not at the fighting of course, but the frenzied media vultures surrounding them. It's of no surprise for me then, that by the time I get home, I have several text messages directing me to Youtube to watch the video of the fight online.

Yes, this post is going to be about the new media. It's of no surprise to anybody that the internet has made the world so much smaller. With just a click of a button, you can connect with someone even 10,000 miles away.  

You can get the latest updates online, from sites such as Youtube and Twitter. The 2008 US Presidential Election, for example, engaged the online community directly, by holding online debates on Youtube. Needless to say, it was a big success.  

Micheal Jackson's death is another prime example of the pervasiveness of the online community. During his funeral, when people all over the world wanted real-life updates, people were on their Twitter accounts on their phones, updating their status' every few minutes.  

Last, but certainly not the very least, information about the Iranian elections and the subsequent demonstrations and riots were received mainly through media like Twitter and Youtube, because of the tight news restrictions within the country.  

With all that's happening using these new sources of media, I cannot help but wander what the future of new media will look like. Will we all get ear implants that can allow us to tune in to any news frequency, wherever we are, at any possible time?  

Or will we have cell phones that can detect brain-wave messages that will update statuses on a Twitter-like website automatically while sending brain-wave updates of our friends to us? The possibilities are endless! The only problem with social media like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and others, is the fact that the popularity of such social media cannot be manufactured. You can't force people to like a service or product, and because of that, determining what's going to be the next big thing is going to be a tough.  

So what does one do in the face of such rising popularity of social media?  

As I accept my Father's request to be my friend on Facebook, I feel that we're all just going have to deal with it as it comes and accept that new media is just as credible as traditional media.