The impact of social media has revolutionised the way the world connects, and thinks. It has bought the concept of democracy and free-thinking to parts of the world where it was not seen before. But it also changes the power game, and how warfare is played out in the modern world.

In 2006, a web phenomenon was born in the shape of Twitter. Despite a character limit of 140 per message, it has taken the world over by storm. It represented the ultimate in the “me me me” facade that the web was rapidly becoming, many thanks to the glitzy, blingtard Myspace phenomenon which would soon die out.

The power of Twitter would soon become evident. The growth of this social media platform would never have taken off in the way it had were it not for the advances in mobile technology, which would allow users to access the internet from the palm of their hand. You’re essentially always connected, and Twitter allowed anybody to tell everybody what they were thinking, doing and contemplating.

But the past year has shown the true power of what Twitter can deliver. In June 2009, in the aftermath of the Iranian election, the people took to the streets amid allegations of fraud and rigging. The government took immediate action, and shut down media reporting within the country, hence cutting off the most powerful tools to the people – news and communication.

But the growth of social media was something the government were not prepared for. In the space of a week, over 2 million tweets were sent out of Iran by over half a million users, informing the world of what was really happening inside the locked down nation. Real news, from real people who were living the events as they happened. The rules of the game had changed forever, and autocratic governments no longer hold the grip they once did over media and information.

The Haitian earthquake in the past month was one of the largest crises in recent times. In previous international emergencies, the news of how to donate would be shared through traditional media – newspapers, television and radio. The gathering of donations would be a slower process, and money would be accumulated over days as the news would filter out of the devastated areas.

The Haiti earthquake changed this. The process was two-fold; the initial move by charities were to set up a quick and convenient method to be able to donate money – through a mobile phone. An essential device in this modern world, for many people it is difficult to imagine life without a phone to hand. Many people are connected through phone plans or contracts, and think nothing of how much they use their phone.. until the bill comes, anyways.

The charities took advantage of this method and developed a new method by which to donate money to disaster relief funds. By allowing people to text a word to an easy to remember number, they could quickly accumulate amounts from people who want a quick and easy way to “do something to help”. Text “DONATE” to a five digit number, and you can send $10 to help a country which has just seen a huge catastrophe.

The second part of this process was played by social media. Within minutes and hours of the charities announcing their quick method of donating money, the message was spread across the world. Not through the old, traditional media, but by Twitter and Facebook.

Users would post a message on either service and share the news of how to donate with people who were their friends or followed them.

On Twitter, followers would then click the “ReTweet” button, which would then send the same message to their own followers. On Facebook, the message would appear in people’s news feeds, who would then pass the message onto their own friends through status updates. It’s basically a positive version of the Ponzi “Pyramid” scheme, in that news is shared on an exponential scale.

This allowed the news to be shared to a much larger number of people, in a much more direct way than before, and allowed people to donate through an easy method, in an affordable amount.

Social media has revolutionised the way the world connects and interacts, and by to connecting to each other, we are connecting to the wider world. Think of it as six degrees of separation – we’re all constantly sharing information. It’s only a matter of time before that information reaches us. By doing it online, we’re making the process quicker, more efficient and getting our news direct from the sources.