Social Media, 1999 - Present

Although technology and my preferred means of messaging have changed since my earliest years of social media, I can still remember my dad summoning my nine-year-old self to his computer to set up my first email address.  As Hotmail’s account information recalls, “Jendancer62” joined the World Wide Web on July 1st, 1999.  Quite anti-climactically, at that, seeing as my only four 'contacts' lived under my same roof.  At the time, I was jealous of my friends who connected to the Internet via AOL and were immediately told, "You've got mail." As much as I tried, Hotmail never spoke to me. It was pretty upsetting for a kid.

The social media ballpark became much more exciting when I set up my own AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) account, which provided endless opportunities to chat and exchange silly emoticons with my fellow fifth-grade peers.  After four years of glitzy buddy icons, calculated away messages, and the occasional conversation with SmarterChild, MySpace sparked my Internet interest.  I probably created and deleted three different accounts before deciding that MySpace was not only my space, but also the space of every creep on the planet.  I can’t condemn the site in its entirety, however – MySpace Music has been incredibly helpful over the years.

            After MySpace, naturally, came Facebook.  My two older brothers, who were in college and could log in with their school email addresses, dangled the website in front of my intrigued Facebook-less face.  When the site eventually opened up to high school students, I was ecstatic to see what all the fuss was about.  Now, five years later, Facebook has become a staple of modern communication.  As one of my primary daily social media technologies, Facebook has completely taken the place of AIM (aside from iChat/AIM video features) and, as an informal system of messaging, some aspects of email.  I continue to use Gmail to communicate with family members, work contacts, professors, and fellow students, but Facebook is undoubtedly the easiest way to keep in touch with those in other states and countries.  Although unlike MySpace, once Facebook has you, it’s hard to imagine a world without.

I recently joined the iPhone bandwagon, which allows emails and Facebook notifications to be delivered and received with the ease of text messages.  Such features have helpfully cut down the amount of time I spend on my laptop.  Aside from the occasional tweet and a neglected Tumblr, I’ve found myself habitually perusing Reddit and Digg, user-based social websites where members upload amusing/interesting content and vote to determine whether said content is deserves ‘front page’ popularity.  Reddit, particularly, has a well-defined sense of humor and inside jokes comparable to those one might have with a small group of friends, except with one billion page views a month.  As a source of content for my internship, I’ve found social news websites as such becoming my most-frequented social media hubs of the semester.

 

Jen Lewis

 

My Use of Social Media

      I feel like social media has always been a part of my life whether or not I've ever truly realized it. I've had a computer for about as long as I can remember. My first interaction with the internet in particular was of course through AOL. I remember being so excited to have my first screen name. AOL remained a large part of my life for years to come. First all that I could use was the Kids Only section of AOL. Personally, I thought it was awesome. My favorite part was the chat rooms which I would spend hours and hours on. I felt like I could be anyone and talk to anyone. However, looking back, I realize how concerned I began with my image through this social media. In AOL you were able to personalize a profile. I would spend hours and hours making mine look as cool as possible playing around with the fonts and colors. Basically I had been trying to make my virtual self look as best as possible. I believe that's similar to the obsession of what you should name your screen name. I remember the variety of screen names picked like cutie143 or HottAngel90 as if just the name could make everyone think you look better or are cooler. It's actually quite comical once you analyze it and really look into the obsession with what people think of you and how it is relayed to the online world as well.

           As time went by I began my journey "down the rabbit hole" of social media. I started using xanga and truly felt how addicting it was to literally just talk about yourself and read about other people's lives. It's this weird socially acceptable stalking. That is I must mention extremely addicting. Now fast forwarding up to present day where social media is basically taking over the world I must say I feel as if I am slowly growing out of the fad rather than diving in even deeper. Don't get me wrong though believe me I still check Facebook everyday but I don't use as it  as much as I used to. I still spend a lot of time checking up on people and yes "stalking" people but I don't interact with people as much as I used to. I used to write a lot of comments or post on people's walls even "poke" them but now it's every so often rather than everyday. I've also noticed that facebook and social media can exasperate insecurities. Let's say your home alone on a Friday night and the next day you see all these photos posted from this awesome party that guess what... you weren't invited to. Personally, I don't let that stuff bother me too much but it really makes me scared for those who are still very emotionally immature like middle schoolers and high schoolers. Whenever I hear about someone killing themselves over something on Facebook or any other type of social media site it really depresses me. Though social media is great in many aspects it gives people the ability to be mean and horrible with not many consequences.  I wonder what our generation would be like without social media. 

 I feel like social media at the same time distances relationships but also makes them closer. With that I mean sometimes relationships can become less intimate  with the fact that there are still so many ways to communicate and keep up with a relationship without even being in the same place. However when looking at that exact same statement and thinking about long distance relationships and families and friends that live thousands of miles apart it's actually the opposite - social media helps these relationships remain close. 

I believe that any media that allows people to come together online and communicate in one way or another is a social media. I mainly stick to Facebook and use it as a tool to keep up with my friends and as a tool to entertain myself by looking at other people's Facebooks and checking up on their lives. It's also extremely helpful in the work force for networking and advertising. Basically to sum this all up I must say social media is no longer that big of a part in my life. I more use it as a form of entertainment and something to do when I'm bored than as an every day necessary tool. Don't get me wrong though, I think social media is extremely great and helpful in many many different ways and I'm sure I'll get sucked back in some time soon. 

Jessica W

My Use of Social Media

 As much as I hate to admit it, a typical day starts with me shutting off my iPhone alarm and then almost immediately checking my personal and professional email accounts. Working in the media field, my bosses and colleagues tend to be similarly glued to their smartphones, so seeing my daily influx of emails reminds me that no, I can’t hit that snooze button, it’s time to get up and get going! Reading my emails as soon as I wake up gives me an idea of what I need to accomplish that day, as well as what's going on in the world from all of the newsletters I subscribe to.

 

There is definitely an irony in email being the social medium I am most reliant on today, as it was one of the first social sites I joined but also the first I dismissed. When I became active on the Internet socially in middle school, I found email to be rather boring due to its slow pace and used it sparingly, mostly to manage my accounts with other websites. As many of my classmates have noted, AIM was the place to be for preteens including myself, and I had the screen name and the embarrassingly emo profile lyrics to prove it. 

 

Stereotypically of my generation, the next step for me was to get a Xanga—or five. I began with one I wrote my day-to-day life in and quickly created others that were more focused on my interests. It’s funny to see now how Tumblr and fashion blogging has taken off and become such a phenomenon, as I was using my Xanga as a site to post my favorite fashion photos, videos, and even outfit pictures as young as 14 (of course, the majority of my “fashionable” finds were from Abercrombie, so I was far from being the undiscovered Anna Wintour). 

 

When I entered high school, I “matured” out of my Xanga and moved onto MySpace. I was quite active in this as well, though the interpersonal social implications of high school (such as joining extracurricular activities, getting a later curfew, and being allowed to date) definitely impacted my use of social media. Though I had the cool "skins" and uploaded the mandatory "MySpace mirror pics," I did not have many actual conversations with my friends through the site. Therefore, my interest eventually faded, and I actually had a sizable lag between when I really stopped posting on my MySpace and when I got a Facebook at age 16. I was at first very against the whole Facebook idea and thought it was bizarre but soon found myself sucked into its social web as more and more friends pushed me towards it (one of my friends actually created my page when I initially refused).

My Twitter involvement went along a similar path—I was not interested in having a profile but found myself “peer pressured” into it, though this time it was not by a friend but from my boss (I worked for a start-up website that was adamant about employees utilizing social media to promote it). Admittedly, I have become a fan of Twitter and actually worked for a semester managing the social media profiles of a bakery, with a focus on continuously updating their Twitter and hosting “Twitter chats.” 

 

While email, Facebook, and Twitter take up the majority of the time I spend using social media, I do try to maintain a LinkedIn profile for potential employers as well. Being interested in entering the journalism field, I also use YouTube to post my video work and have contributed pieces to various interactive blogs and websites. Though I have been invited and tempted to join Tumblr and Google +, I have reached a point where I do not wish to have any more of my personal information on the Internet. With graduation looming, I am more than aware that my presence online will be viewed just as much as my resume by future employers and that definitely weighs into just how public I want my social interactions to be. 


Colleen Hagerty

Social Media Reflection

A thorough Google search of my name and email address would return a
flurry of results detailing my digital life for the past ten years,
depending on which email address one searched. I have been online
using social media for the second half of my short life, as is
illustrated in old Xanga accounts, an inactive but existent MySpace,
the ghost of my once great Facebook, and my current, and very active,
Twitter and Tumblr accounts. I consider these to be my main outlets of
social media, in addition to my Gmail account, and frequent them quite
often.
Facebook used to consume a great deal of my free, or not so free as it
often was, time. Toward the end of my stint with Facebook I was no
longer posting prophetic statuses and snapshots, but was largely using
it to keep updated on my friends’ lives: who was pregnant, who was
married, who recently died of a drug overdose. It was a great tool for
keeping tabs on people who you did not see in your real life, which
was also the reason I deleted it. As it seems to be the trend for many
of the school of heartbreak, I left Facebook so as to not be
distracted by the posts of my recent ex-girlfriend. Come to find out
she deleted hers days after my final log-off.

Aside from Facebook, Twitter is perhaps the social platform most
ingrained in my life. There are various apps installed on my wi-fi
enabled iPod Touch and Blackberry for a constant feed of my daily
musings. Often these are rants about what I don’t feel like doing,
what the freak next to me does feel like doing, and for basic
communication with people who don’t need to know my phone number.
Lately I’ve also been using Twitter to keep updated on news and goings
on about town, mainly because it is updated much more frequently than
traditional news sources. This has become part of my professional life
as well, as my internship requires I find original content for
stories. Accounts like @NYScanner have great updates about crime that
would normally be heard on a police scanner.

Tumblr is now the greatest time suck in my life. I’m not entirely sure
what the purpose of the website is, but I use it to post brief
personal blogs and a phenomenal amount of images, both original and
reblogged, that peak my interest. Everything from bicycles, to baby
animals, to nude women, and the current song I’m listening to can be
found on my Tumblr. This site is less used to communicate with people
and more used for browsing content that others have posted, though I
suppose it still qualifies as social media.

Finally, we come to the boring platform of email. I’ve been using it
as long as I’ve had a computer; it just infiltrates my life
significantly more now. It’s the more bland of all social media that I
use and if I didn’t need to keep in touch with professors and the
textbook company that sent me the wrong book, I’d surely get rid of it
all together. While some people may view email as the most basic
social medium for some reason I can’t explain it does not seem like
one to me at all. Perhaps there is not enough going on for my taste.

Sarah Nelson

Reflecting on Social Media

I use email (gmail specifically) on a daily basis and I also often use
facebook and tumblr as Jessica and Clarke both mention. I recently
started using twitter (kayla8thecity is my twitter handle and so far
creating it was one of my highlights with the platform!) I bbm a few
close friends daily and text with others (who have iphones).
Emails are the medium I use with greatest frequency. I notice that the
types of emails I send have a large range of segmented audiences: I
use email to contact bosses and external companies that I will have
professional relations with, such as my moving company. I used it to
engage strictly on a personal level with: my Aunt Ellen who lives in
CA, my parents (which blurs the lines since I use email for “business”
matters i.e. itemizing NYU costs) and occasionally friends (if not,
facebook). Baym speaks of the new technology’s ability to grant us
“separation of presence” but simultaneously subjects us to new forms
of control, surveillance and constraint (Baym, 4). I notice how I
choose between sending emails or facebook based on these new forms of
control. Here the pervasiveness of the surveillance indicative of
social media is both apparent and hidden—when I post on a friend’s
facebook wall I seldom think about someone I haven’t seen/spoken to in
years surveying it. But a small part of me is conditioned to expect
that very possibility and is often willing to take the opportunity to
converse independent of temporal constraints.
I also use tumblr, because it feels like virtual collaging to reblog
images; I like as a source of private time and stress-relief. A lot
of my media use exhibits the characteristics of “a privatized media
rich bedroom culture:” sitting on my laptop in my bed connecting with
images/people through technology but in solitude (Baym, 23).
I find gmail the most useful of the social media I engage with, since
it affords me flexibility because it is asynchronous and does not
limit characters like texting. I like BBM on blackberry but find the
feature that allows the sender to view when the recipient has encoded
the message a double-edged sword. Rather than let the rhythm develop
organically this feature of BBM increases the cadence of a
conversation dramatically since the message becomes marked as read
—which depending on the topic of conversation can cause a totally
different sub-message to arrive.
A more broad reflection of a temporal nature brings me to my first
interaction with social media. It was indirect. I was a 7th grader who
had just moved and all my new school friends requested my AIM screen
name. AIM was forbidden in my home—probably because my parents had
what David Nye would call a “dystopian reaction” to the media (Baym,
28). I guess social media insighted fear for my parents, who didn’t
want me to be bullied (or worse be a bully) so I was mandated to role
of outside observer. Regardless of my feelings on the matter 7th
grade Kayla was in a situation that mimics the global issue of the
digital divide of those who have Internet and those who don’t have
access to it (Baym, 18).
Seeing printed records of conversations passed out on the bus I too
began to see AIM as an agent of doom (28). The manipulation of the
archived conversation was unique to instant messenger. If the same
conversation had occurred in-person it’s recording would be more
difficult to replicate or alter. I realized I was most comfortable in
my mandated observer role because I didn’t like what AIM was “doing”
to my friends –a typical technological determinism response. I saw AIM
as a casual agent that changed my friends in ways that they had little
power to resist. While social consequences of using AIM could be grim
with people trusting the ephemeral nature of the space, I now see how
the intent of the sender/receiver pair colored the medium, an
observation in line with the social constructivist position (24).
What struck me was how my friends appeared incapable of reflecting on
the very real possibly their conversations would be archived,
potentially edited and then distributed.
I think AIM is a great example of Baym’s “New Media, New Boundaries”
section since as I gained exposure to this form of communication I
tried to understand how it operated. I wondered why everyone had “xox”
proceeding and following their username, and why no one was using
their real names? Examining this it after reading “Social Network
Sites: Definitions, History, and Scholarship” it makes more sense.
That feature allowed users to “type themselves into being” (211).
Instant Messenger facilitates communication with user-chosen
identifier tags, which seemed to give the participants permission to
assert dominance over others in this virtual community. I learned the
social rules of AIM from sleepovers: statuses could be song lyrics or
symbols. They could be directed to someone without actually speaking
to them—which is often how statuses were used. AIM marked my
introduction to the use of the Internet to manage impressions, perform
within friend circles, and create an avatar of the self. Circulation
of ideas and opinions are often shared in mediated “settings” and I
now participate as a user of facebook and other platforms that have
similar defining features—but perhaps based on the jarring first
experiences as an observer of AIM, I still tread uneasily on this
well-worn social media terrain.

Kayla

Social Media Usage Reflection

I remember getting my first AOL screen name (AIM) and the sound it made whenever you sent an instant message. It was the main medium for me to communication with my friends outside of school because I didn’t get a cellphone until high school. I also remember everyone had a xanga back in middle school, the site where people poured their heart out and gave ‘propz’ (a.k.a. comments) to each other’s entries. Then MySpace got popular and everyone was on MySpace, though I cannot recall anything significant I did on Myspace except changing my profile layout constantly. I think it was when Facebook allowed High School students to sign up for an account that I deleted my MySpace profile. At the time, Facebook compare to MySpace was exclusive and more sophisticated (since none of your Facebook friends have the name ‘BabY_G1RLZ’).

Now whenever I open my internet browser, I automatically do the following (in order): check my personal email and school email, look at news feed on Facebook, read timeline on Twitter and then scroll through my Tumblr dashboard. For a class last semester, we had to not use any Google product for an entire week and I failed that task the night it started because I opened Gmail without instinctively right when I open my internet browser.

Checking all the social media medium became a habit for me. In order to make sure I do not miss any message from potential employer or the upcoming sale on Gilt Groupe, I have to check my email. Checking the news feed on Facebook let me know everything that’s going on in my friends’ life so I can stay up to date with them. Twitter is where I read my news, interesting articles or witty line from @Lord_Voldemort7. Tumblr at the moment is where I reblog interesting posts I see on my dashboard. Facebook is probably the site that I use most often compare to the others since most of my friends are on it.

Also, Recently I was reconnected with my elementary school friends back in Taiwan on Facebook, it made me feel really good that there is a common platform that we now use across border. However, I cannot say I completely love the relationship I have with social media. The way it has became a habit of mine to have to check all these different sites in order to feel connected to the world and friends and family.

 

Jessica Y.

@jayckah

My use of social media technologies

My social media life began with the first emails I exchanged with my oldest cousin probably somewhere in 1996 or 1997. It expanded as I got an AOL username in around 1998 and was able to instant message, email, post to message boards, and even go in the infamous AOL chat rooms. For a while, instant messaging was the main social media staple in my life, until 2004 when I got an account on MySpace and in 2005 when I joined Facebook.

Today, I generally just use Twitter, which is tough to say as I spent the longest time advocating against it. However, since January, it has been a fun platform to work in, both personally and professionally. I began a social media marketing internship at the New York Daily News in June and have been working on engaging with bloggers on Twitter in a more business-savvy manner. 

Surprisingly for me, Twitter has become a real staple for news in my life. I never imagined the short format would encourage the spread of important information––I had subscribed to the school of thought that Twitter was for banal moment-to-moment updates on one's life. Being able to follow a story from the first retweeted eyewitness account to a full-fledged story on the New York Times is revolutionary and I believe, in some form, will be the future of journalism.

I am wary about social media as a device for political uprising because, although it proved to insight a meaningful governmental overthrow in Egypt, it had detrimental effects in the organization of the London riots this past summer. I think it will take some time to see how social media continue to influence politics, because it really is a democratic form of media that lets everyone have their soapbox and to speak from it. 

Clarke B

Blog Post 1 Prompt: Your use of social media technologies

Write a post of a few paragraphs reflecting on your own everyday use of social media technologies. Before you compose your post, you may want to keep an informal diary of how you use social media on a typical day. In your post, you can answer any or all of the following questions: Which social media technologies do you use on a typical day and what do you do with them? Which social media do you use most often? Which uses do you find most helpful/necessary in your life? Can you recall your first encounter with social media technology? Which media would you consider to be "social media"? Are you satisfied with the place of social media in your life or is there something you would like to be different?

Your post should be published by 9am on Tuesday, September 13. Please include an identifier in your post so that our class will know who wrote it. You can use your real name, your first name and last initial, your twitter username, etc.