Most Used Platforms

Is it mind blowing to anybody else, how many social media platforms there are floating around in the ominous World Wide Web? Maybe ominous isn’t the right word to use, because social media truly can be an incredible thing, but then again it is so vast. For me it is like the ocean with deep dark unknowns that I probably will never know anything about. Today I have decided to discuss two social media platforms. One I use daily and the other I hardly know anything about, but have always wanted to explore.

Snapchat

Snapchat has become part of my everyday life, unfortunately even my hourly life. I find myself checking it way more often than I would like to admit. Snapchat is defined on

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/what-is-snapchat/281551/

as being, “a photo-sharing service with one key distinguishing feature: the photos you send disappear.” It then goes on to discuss the feature of a screenshot and how you can capture a picture if you are the receiver, but the sender is automatically informed. The main focus of snapchat that I want to focus on is the limited time allotted to capture something, and that it then disappears from the recipient’s device. I will later contrast this with the second platform I will be discussing, Vine. Snapchat allows its user to take pictures or video clips that can last anywhere from 1 to 10 seconds. This ingenious service, to me just brings texting to life. I find that I “snap” my close friends and family far more than I text them anymore. For me this is because I can actually see the person I am talking to and I feel that I really am engaging in a conversation with them. The article goes on to call snapchat a form of “ephemeral communication” or just a brief communication. They use this term because of the short time the image or video can be seen, but are the effects of such communication really just brief? Or do we feel a deeper connection to those we are communicating with, because we can actually see them? This by no means even compares to face to face contact, but it’s just a little food for thought.

Vine

According to

http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networking-websites

as of January 2016 Vine ranks as the 10^th most popular social media platform with 42,000,000 monthly visitors. I was actually really surprised by this statistic, especially since Snapchat didn’t even end up in the top 15. I know that from my experience, Vine was a huge thing when I was in high school. I don’t hear too much about it anymore, but I don’t know if that’s just because we all grew up and moved on, or because it’s becoming outdated. As I said before, I know what vine is, but I have never been a big user myself.

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/app-reviews/vine

is a site designated to inform parents about what social media sites their children may be using and what exactly they are using. Vine is a platform where six second videos can be posted to an individual’s profile for anyone to see. This differs from snapchat in time and the number of people who can see it. This is also dependent on profile privacy settings, but are those settings actually legitimate anyway? Vine is similar to Snapchat in the fact that the post is at the publisher’s discretion and unfortunately nearly anything can be posted. In my personal opinion I do believe that vine has more overall mature content, whereas Snapchat is really just dependent on the sender and receiver.

Although these tools can be used for communications and creative expression, there are risks that can come from any social media site. So always be cautious with what you are sending, receiving and looking into. Let’s make the World Wide Web a little less creepy and a little more creative. 

Blogging

I find this post to be a little ironic as I am actually blogging about blogging. Although maybe it isn’t really that ironic, as blogging has become such a force in our world today. According to Dictionary.com, blogging has only been a “thing” since 1995 and is now used as a noun as to own your own blog, and a verb as the action of blogging. The question that filled my mind this week as I have thought a lot about blogging is, why do people blog? What’s the point? As you can probably tell, I am new to the world of blogging, and I don’t ask these questions to try and ridicule this whole new world of the web. I simply feel that I could become a better blogger if I knew why and how these passionate blog authors felt. Here’s where my thoughts lead me:

http://learninglab.wbur.org/2016/01/19/a-teacher-a-committee-member-and-a-parent-walk-into-a-blog/

This article was written about a high school history teacher named, Michael Milton. He states early on in the article, “It was just like I had all these things stored up that I wanted to say. I hope that putting myself out there, that’s kind of like showing ‘Here’s the mind of a teacher, here’s what teachers do.'”  Milton as a teacher feels that he never has the opportunity of interacting with other adults. The article recognizes that this thought process isn’t exactly true, but it helped me to realize that I am sure there are many teachers who feel this way. As well as I am sure that there are people all over the world that feel that not only do they not have the option to talk to adults, but maybe they feel that they don’t have anyone at all to speak with. Blogging provides a place for strangers from every corner of the world to come together and chat about what they are interested in. With the push of the button, all of your ideas and thoughts can be expressed to an audience innumerable. Later on in this article the idea of blogging as a space for parents to express the way they feel about their student’s education is discussed. For many people blogging, isn’t about making personal relationships but just getting things off their chest. In an article on a well-known site The Boot,

 http://theboot.com/rory-feek-blog-therapy/

helped me to grasp this concept a little further. This article refers to a blog that is written by Rory Feek from the singing duo Joey and Rory. Rory as the author of this blog writes about his wife, Joey’s, terminal cancer. He began the blog many years ago before she was diagnosed with this devastating disease. Joey is quoted saying that blogging for him has become “therapeutic” and a way to “capture memories” of his sweetheart. As I reflected on these two articles I now understand why people blog, and I believe that the best bloggers are those that are fiercely passionate about what they write about. Blogging gives anyone and everyone the opportunity to be an author of their favorite stories. Blogging allows these stories to be shared on a very personal level, that I believe can truly move people. I am excited to be joining what seems to be an immense family of bloggers, and begin to tell my own life stories  

Social Media Case Reflection 1

“…you’ve got to be careful what you post online. It can come back and bite you.” Chris Burton made this statement while being interviewed by the IndyStar. As I read through the article that they recently posted about a dialogue between a disgruntled customer and the restaurant manager on Facebook (if you haven’t read it, I would highly recommend giving it a try at http://www.indystar.com/story/life/food/2016/01/04/kilroys-goes-viral-after-response-angry-customer/78252026/. It is pretty mind blowing.) I couldn’t agree more. We have all been told throughout our lives to be careful what we post on the internet, you never know who will see it. This is just another example of this. I was shocked to read that the customer who made the initial comment deleted the post and her Facebook account, as if this would keep people from seeing it.

Facebook claims that their users have on average 338 friends. In an article posted at

http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/29/facebook-post-reach-16-friends/

it states that only about 12% of your friends actually see the things you are posting. So let’s say that we take 12% of that average 338 friends. That equals just about 41 of your friends that see any one of your given posts. That may seem like only a few people, but imagine if a few of your friends share what you have posted, so that 41 of their friends see it. Then a few of their friends share it, and their friends share it. Within a matter of moments your post can go from being seen by just those 41 people to thousand or even millions of people. I am sure this women was very upset about her evening spent at this restaurant, and had no idea that her post and the manager’s comment could go viral in a matter of moments. Unfortunately, once a post is public there is no way of fully getting it back. Sure, it can be deleted from your page or even your account can be shut down, but once it’s public, it is out of your hands.

Another situation of public scrutiny is displayed at

http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/local/dallas-county/2015/07/21/dallas-fire-rescue-worker-under-investigation-after-social-media-post/30489991/

This summer there was an intensive investigation after a firefighter made what appeared to be some racial comments on Facebook. The firefighter also deleted the post and comment from his page, but once again it was too late. The first article that I mentioned and this second article both discuss the fact the employers are often involved in these situations. So not only does this effect the person in a social, and emotional way, but can effect whether or not they are still employed. Social media is incredible and beneficial for the fact that it allows us to express thing we are feeling and keep in contact with people across the world. This can also be very harmful. As human beings we are often easily upset and quick to react. I am sure that neither of these individual had any idea of the ramifications that would follow their posts. They clearly felt very strongly about what they posted, but everyone that saw their posts, is free to have their own opinion.

Although these “nasty” Facebook messages have gone viral, there has been some good from this foul situation. According to

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/social/indiana-bar-customer-posts-insensitive-facebook-rant-about-heart-attack-victim-bars-manager

the daughter of the woman who suffered the heart attack on New Year’s Eve has started a GoFundMe account where people have donated over $14,000 to help pay for the woman’s medical bills. It is very interesting to me that not only are people so willing to critique and publicly humiliate someone, they are also quick to aid. Unfortunately, I do not believe that the simple fund account would have gone viral on its own. Without the negative attention that Holly Jones has received, I believe there would only have been a fraction of the funds raised. The changes of social media through sites such as Facebook, give us the opportunity to truly analyze people and the way we tick. Are people donating money to this fund because they truly care about the woman or is it to scrutinize Holly Jones even more? Is this a symbol of love or of “we will show you”? There is no way of tracking conversions about people’s intentions like we can “likes” and “shares.” It is very evident that a situation such as this would not have existed even fifteen years ago. Social Media has completely changed the way we communicate with one another, and truly made the world a smaller place, but is that always a good thing?    

Social Media Change

I work in the marketing department for a small company in Providence, Utah. As of right now our major source of marketing is Facebook. Within a matter of moments I can reach thousands of people by posting a simple image or video. No longer are we dependent on who-knows-who and passing out flyers. In an article published on http://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/article/2015-05-02/188395/, I quote “The need for fewer sentences has pushed for many short forms that we find ourselves using in our daily communication…” and then it goes on to list some of these shortened terms that most of us see and use daily. I find it a challenge every day to try and portray our brand in as few as words as possible. I know that with how social media has changed the way we look at things, I have a matter of seconds to show someone who we are and what we represent. In 2014 the article http://www.socialnomics.net/2014/07/28/25-years-of-the-internet-how-it-has-changed-the-way-we-interact/ was published and produced some facts that were incredible to me. The author stated that as of 2014 there are more than 500 million tweets that are sent out every day. A tweet allows a person 14o characters to share whatever is on their mind. In a matter of seconds anyone in the world can know exactly what you’re thinking, but no one is going to read a long winded novel about your day. That is why social media has changed the way we communicate with each other. Not only can we do most of our communicating with others behind a screen, we are limited to how much we can say, so we use basically a different language. Not only can everyone know what we are thinking, but this change in social media actually allows us to think less. When looking for articles and other sources to support my ideas on this topic, I asked google. Almost instantly I was shown hundreds of thousands of examples, and all I did was type in the simple question. It’s effortless. In the United States and in many countries across the globe, we are all about how quickly we can get something done, or move on to the next thing. Fast food restaurants help us to order and have our food in less than five minutes. TiVo allows us to record our favorite shows, and watch them much quicker without all of the commercials. Social media allows us to ask a question or make a statement and receive immediate response. This change has taken place in many aspects of each of our lives. We now see the world of communication, food, marketing, and many other entities in a new light, and this “light” comes about instantaneously.