For individuals working in the public relation department, the job is consistently changing and the impact is coming from the social web.

[citation needed] Today hundreds of millions of Internet users are using thousands of social websites to stay connected with their friends, discover new "friends", and to share user-created content, such as photos, videos, social bookmarks, and blogs, even through mobile platform support for cell phones.

[2]: 13  The web got its start as a large but simple Bulletin Board System (BBS) that allowed users to exchange software, information, news, data, and other messages with one another.

[2]: 13  By the late 1990s, personal web sites that allowed individuals to share information about their private lives with others were increasingly widespread.

[2]: 14  In the mid '90s, Amazon and other pioneers made great progress in advancing online social interaction by discovering how to link databases to their web sites in order to store information as well as to display it; in concert with other innovations, this led to the rise of read-write web applications, allowing for a "two-way conversation" between users and the individual or organization running the site.

[10] It has been argued that this trend towards social media "can be seen as an evolution back to the Internet's roots, since it re-transforms the World Wide Web to what it was initially created for: a platform to facilitate information exchange between users.

[16] Both blogs and Wikis are prime examples of collaboration through the Internet, a feature of the group interaction that characterizes the social Web.

Blogs and Wikis allow users to share information and educate one another, and these social interaction are focused on content and meaning.

[14]: 233  Popular social web sites such Facebook Mobile, Orkut, Twitter, and YouTube have led the way for other sites to enable their users to post and share new content with others, update their statuses and receive their friends' updates and uploaded content via mobile platforms.

[14]: 233 The central aim for both sites offering these mobile services and for those who use them is for the user to maintain contact with their friends online at all times; it allows them to update their profiles and to communicate with each other even when they are away from a computer.

[14]: 233  It is predicted that this trend will continue in the future, not as other sites follow suit to offer similar services, but as they are extended to other mobile devices that social web users will carry with them in years to come.

[14]: 233  Social web mobile applications can also allow for augmented reality gaming and experiences; examples of such include SCVGR and Layar.

[22] Web sites that are not built around social interaction nevertheless add features that enable discussion and collaboration out of an interest in expanding their user bases—a trend that is projected to continue in the coming years.

Nobody seems to mind...Customer reviews allow people to learn about a product from the experience of others without any potentially biased seller information.

[2]: 4 These customer reviews contribute valuable information that individuals seek out, and are written by users for free simply out of a desire to share their experiences with a product or service with others; the quality and value of each review is further determined by other users, who rate them based upon whether or not they found the feedback helpful, "weeding out the bad (by pushing them to the bottom [of the page]).

"[2]: 4 Non-retailer, special interest websites have also implemented social web features to broaden their appeal: one example is Allrecipes.com, a community of 10 million cooks that share ideas and recipes with one another.

Increasingly prevalent mobile devices have offered a platform for media companies to create hybridised media forms which draw upon the social web, such as the Fango mobile app offered by Australian partnership Yahoo!7 which combines traditional TV programming with live online discussions and existing social networking channels.

The Internet serves as a screen, helping to evoke the purest feedback from the participants in the group, as it removes much of a mob mentality.

[31] The way in which individuals share intimate details, and perform tasks such as dating, shopping, and applying for jobs is very different from in previous generations.

[34] eBay Inc. acquired Skype in 2005 and significantly expanded its customer base to more than 480 million registered users in nearly every country on earth.

[35] The result of all eBay transactions is a seller providing the buyer with a product, most commonly via mail: web interaction ending in a real world exchange.

Craigslist is used to bring together individuals and organizations and connect them to the resources, tools, technology and ideas they need to effectively engage in community building and see the impact of their actions.

[37] The transaction from web to real life is seen on a macro scale most recently on dating websites, which are used to search and match other users.

Academics who have studied the industry believe that it and other forms of electronic communication such as e-mail and social networks are starting to have a significant effect on the ways in which people find love.