Social media originated as strictly a personal tool that people used to interact with friends and family but were later passed through by some businesses that who wanted to take advantage of a popular new communication method to communicate to customers, for example, by sending e-mail or forward those coupons on Facebook and Twitter.

Social media includes web-based and mobile technologies used to turn communication into interactive conversation. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." There are several types of social media including magazines, internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, microblogging, wikis, podcasts, photographs or pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking.

According to the study from the University of Maryland, it suggested that social media services maybe addictive because the growth in social network patents is around 20% annually. Today, people spent 22% of their online time on social networking such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Weblog. 

In 2011, there are over 50% of world population is under 30 years. If Facebook is a country, then it will become the third largest country in the world that which carrying more than 750 million users. Also, Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.

According to a report by Nielson, “In the U.S. alone, total minutes spent on social networking sites has increased 83 percent year-over-year. In fact, total minutes spent on Facebook increased nearly 700 percent year-over-year, growing from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009, making it the No. 1 social networking site for the month.”