This is a guest post from Pamelia Brown.

It has been said time and time again, social networking has revolutionized and redefined our society. Responding to our need for constant stimulation and constant interaction, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube have taken over the internet and consumed our lives. All too often, people discuss this social media revolution in a negative light. While the constant flash and buzz of the internet can be detrimental to some aspects of life, social media has brought us together and helped foster a global community in many ways.

As social networks develop and grow, they have begun to include applications and widgets that allow users to cross-post status updates, videos, pictures, and more with other social media sites. For example, next to Facebook, Twitter is one of the leading social media interfaces available on the web. Through Twitter, individuals share ideas, discuss topics, and market themselves to the world. In February of 2011, Twitter introduced a way for users to upload videos to the site itself using various existing video clients, including yfrog, Youtube, and more. This means that outside clients are now controlling a portion of Twitter. Outside developers (a middle man) create applications and widgets that interact with Twitter and the video agent together and then they control a large part of how and why people use the site.

This was an interesting move for Twitter to make in the social media realm. In an attempt to keep users from leaving the site, Twitter allows other big name social media hubs to be featured within its interface and invites third party middlemen to control aspects of their site. Many business-minded individuals may see this as a dangerous move. While allowing more intriguing features within their own site, Twitter now also attracts public eye to their competitor’s sites.

However, based on the way we use the internet, this move really makes sense for the user. The fact is many people use all of these sites for their social media needs; having them all interconnected is beneficial for us: the consumer. Today’s social media needs and expectations are different then they once were. We expect sites to emphasize utility and compatibility with one another. If one site lacks a function that a similar site has, that site will lose traffic and, in turn, lose revenue. Twitter and Facebook have embraced this evolution in social media use and reacted to it. Encouraging second party developers for apps and widgets is a seemly dangerous business move, but entirely necessary in the social media climate of today.

So, ultimately we are discussing here something greater than the ubiquity of social media. Cross-application posting brings up the intriguing relationship between user interests and business interests. As we can see from the example of social networking and its omnipresence in our lives, business interests usually lie within the user’s interests.

This is a guest post by Pamelia Brown, who specializes in writing about associates degree. Questions and comments can be sent to: pamelia.brown@gmail.com.