Twitter is fading fast, becoming a niche echo chamber for journalists and publicists. Facebook is fragmenting, and services you’ve never heard of, but billions use daily, are dominating the online media scene. Welcome to cultural media, where the medium truly is the message.

Even shops and malls are media now, providing entertainment, information and marketing opportunities first; products and transactions second. Most shoppers prefer to buy their goods online or in-store, for later delivery. It’s more convenient that way.

Social media giants introduced a new lexicon, but the hidden truth is that all media is social – it involves society or it doesn’t gain traction or a following.

Television is possibly the medium with the most social and cultural impact of all. Even the web and social channels spend a lot of airtime on TV shows and events, and news channels have cleverly integrated social feedback – often in real time – into their programming. It’s no longer strange to watch TV on your phone.

Now it’s obvious that Social Media was a fad, a buzzword. The internet phenomenon, connecting everyone, everywhere, mainly by mobile devices, has spawned an always-on culture. The western ‘media culture’ presumably driven by mass media, has been replaced by global cultural media, where people dictate the content, communication channels, and modes of interaction, be that online or at the mall.

Media has never been so rich, so diverse, so full of opportunity and innovation. Or so digital. Long live cultural media!