Social media lovers celebrate "the revolution"

The popular social networking blog Mashable has declared today Social Media Day, and techie-types across the country are planning Tweetups to celebrate, as Mashable puts it, "the revolution of media becoming social." Locals are planning a lunch at noon at the Area Fifteen conference center in the Optimist Park neighborhood just north of center-city Charlotte.

Whether you think sites like Facebook and YouTube and Twitter are a bunch of crock, they are having an undeniable impact on life and communications today. Check out these statistics, collected by researchers with Experian Simmons:

• Two-thirds of Americans now use social media sites, up about 230 percent from penetration levels just three years ago.

• It's not just kids. Some 41 percent of online adults ages 50 or older visit social networking sites monthly.
• Nearly half of the people who visit social networking sites say they do so multiple times per day.

Individual networks will come and go, but the millions of people sharing their pictures, videos, Web links and unnecessary random musings over the Internet aren't going to give those privileges up anytime soon. What do you think? Are social networks just a fad? Or have they changed the way you communicate?