The introduction of social media into the world of information represents a huge change in the information processing landscape. Social media promises what industrial media cannot: a public voice, not just for experts, but for everyone. I believe social media has brought three major changes to the way humans handle information. First of all, who produces the world's information has changed. Second, it changed the process by which information is formed. Finally, he actively encouraged the creation of highly dynamic and fluid information. Common to all forms of social media is the notion of consumer-generated media. Since social media is defined as a form of communication (a medium through which information can be transferred), I consider social media as the medium through which information (in this case, consumer-generated content) can be provided . In this article I intend to focus on three areas of information that social media have influenced: personal communication, news delivery, and advertising. Social media sites have completely reformed the way humans share and create information on an interpersonal level. The most prominent example of this change brought about by social media is, by far, the social networking giant known as Facebook. Facebook did to all forms of modern personal communication what the telegraph did to snail mail: it revolutionized the way humans share information. Facebook is rapidly replacing the telephone, Internet forums, and even email as the new preferred media medium for casual/non-professional information exchange. You no longer need to buy a domain name, a website hosting provider, and learn to write html code to share your thoughts on the web. All you have to do is type your name and… half the paper… several orders of magnitude greater than all the changes in information processing that preceded it. With each individual equipped with a newfound voice (or at least a stronger voice), information is created, shared and manipulated at a greater rate than ever before. We're not just observing; we are also authors and judges. Works Cited Acquisti, Alessandro and Ralph Gross. “Predicting Social Security Numbers from Public Data.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106.27 (2009): 10975 -10980. Network. October 23, 2011.Brenhouse, Hillary. "Osama bin Laden's Death on Twitter: Man Live Tweets Killing - TIME NewsFeed." TIME news feed. 2 May 2011. Web. 24 October 2011. Papacarissi, Zizi. “The Virtual Geographies of Social Networks: A Comparative Analysis of Facebook, LinkedIn, and ASmallWorld.” New Media and Society 11.1-2 (February): 199 -220. Network. October 27. 2011.