My use of social media now Vs. before
When I look back to my first post I realize my involvement has changed quite a lot since the beginning of the semester. I feel like at the beginning of the semester and before that I kind of viewed certain social media technologies as invasive, ridiculous, obnoxious and kind of boring. Now, since I am graduating in a few months going on to the real world as well as getting older I have for some reason noticed the importance and fun of a variety of social media platforms.
One example of this is twitter. My like for twitter has been a direct result of this class (due to the fact that we were forced to make a twitter) as well as my roommate. Since I made the step to make a twitter I realized that though at first glance (the fact that all you do is post statuses basically) I thought Twitter was kind of ridiculous. However, I then became more accustom to it even to the point of liking it. One thing that I liked was the fact that Twitter has a very creative and changeable layout. I also liked how it’s in real time and keeps you up to date with not only your friends but also any type of companies you like. I also like how simple the interface is and the fact there isn’t so many features.
I also have found myself to become very involved in the social media platform Foursquare. The way my involvement came to be was through my roommate. Since my roommate moved in with me I started going to her usual Monday nightspot with her and her friends. She would always check in to Foursquare and was this close to becoming the Mayor. For some reason that intrigued me and I thought it was really cool the idea of tracking where you go and being competitive and trying to become a mayor of a place that I was convinced was “my” place. Though, people knowing where I am and knowing where other people are can be seen as slightly creepy it’s really not as creepy as you may think. For example how many times have you gone to a place because you heard through the grape vine was good or how many times have you ran into someone you know at the same place multiple times, is it really that much different to have done it purposefully because you thought the place your friend was at was cool (not in a seriously creepy stalker-ish way though). Another thing that caught my interest was the fact that some places give out specials for checking in a certain amount of times. I think this is fascinating both for the fact that it’s awesome for the user of four square as well as it is a great marketing tool for places. This in particular has intrigued me particularly due to the fact that I would like to go into Advertising and think that these types of marketing techniques will prove to be extremely useful in the advertising field.
Though a lot of my social media changes have been due to other factors this course has helped me notice the incredibly vast amount of social media platforms. I think this course was the catalyst to my increased interest and presences in more social media platforms while other factors just increased it. I think I think of social media in a much less fearful way. Before I used to think of things like Four Square and Twitter as kind of scary and creepy while now I view it in a much more neutral and positive way. I think that if we all focus on the possible bad affects of social media (i.e similar to the mean world syndrome) than we will miss the extremely beneficial and fun aspects of social media.
I think that my view of social media will remain the same for now and I think I may even get more involved with social media as I go into the job market and hopefully start working in advertising. I do think though that political and ethical issues may before more of an issue for me as time goes by particularly because employers are so involved in social media that the ethical and privacy issues will because more concerning for me as I move into that stage of life.
Jessica W.
