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