Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/457819
www.datacenterjournal.com 4 | THE DATA CENTER JOURNAL teLecommunications Telecommunications in the form of wireline, wireless, and satellite trans- missions have consisted of government regulated communication media whereby the human to human communications dominated the data exchange. Once primarily an analog system of landline phones, telecommunications now consists of a broad spectrum of communication solutions including wireless, satellite, and broadband. ese have converged into handheld smartphones that have opened a whole new world of data exchange, includ- ing enabling the social media era. sociaL meDia Boom Per a report by Intel in September of 2014, an "Internet Minute" was dominated by social media with YouTube and Netflix accounting for more than 50% of the worldwide internet traffic. Social media consists of information like text, photos, and videos created by hu- man interactions. Communications have transformed from analog voice, to digital voice, to short-messaging, to millions of photo- and video-based internet-enabled applications for social interactions. is convergence has enabled close- coupled connections between people and technology; a coupling necessary to enable the social media boom. Smartphones are at the heart of this close-coupled con- nection, but it doesn't stop there. Today's technology has transformed from desktop and laptop to notebooks, tablets, and even wearables. To many of us these seemed trivial changes in the technology plat- forms, but they enabled a transformational shi in how we interact with one another. is is evident in the fact that the internet has been around in scale since the mid- nineties although the social boom only really got started aer 2007.