My experience using social media goes back to my undergraduate days, when I joined LiveJournal. LiveJournal was just what it implied-an online journal or diary. It could be entirely private, it could be public and shared with friends. I kept up with it for almost five years, when it seemed to drop off the face of social media. When I attended graduate school the first time, back in 2004, everyone was using Friendster. I was entirely confused about the concept-it just seemed like a way to add people to a list and keep in contact with them. You didn't really write journal entries, or post anything fun. It almost like Classmates.com, the website to keep in touch with old friends from school.
After my initial confusion of Friendster, I found out about Myspace. I joined Myspace in 2005 and it seemed like a fun website. I used it mostly to follow my friends, post quizzes and memes, and post videos. It almost seemed like an online journal of sorts. But then...I kept on hearing about my friends and co-workers talk about Facebook. I had resisted Facebook for a long time. I just didn't want to get involved. Most of my friends were on it incessantly, and kept on bugging me to join. Well, I caved. And that was basically the end of my Myspace page!
I still have my Facebook page (along with Twitter, which I talked about in an earlier post) but it is a private page. I only friend people I actually know and am comfortable with. I don't post as much as I do in the early days, but it's still fun to keep up with my friends.
There are two forms of social media I just never caught on to: LinkedIn and Tumblr. I never got the hang of LinkedIn, nor did it ever suit my job searching or networking needs. Tumblr always confused me. Any time I would go on a Tumblr page it would have a bunch of animated gifs. I didn't see the point. Libraries are using it more and more now, so I'm willing to take another look at it.
I think one of the things that annoys me about social media is that it can contain too much information. I do not like the idea of "checking into" places. Nor do I need to know when a friend of mine is visiting every Starbucks on the Eastern sea board. You want to eat at McDonald's? Good for you! But who else cares? Not this person. Twitter has the same kind of drawback, where people will feel the need to "live tweet" events. Some things I understand, like an award show (especially if people can't watch it at the time) or sporting event. But then there are the people who live tweet every step of their day, or every line from a t.v. show. That's when I gently hit the greatest invention Twitter ever came up with: the Mute button. It lets you quiet people without unfollowing them. Genius!
I believe overall the best part of social media is that it really has let me connect with people from my past. I studied in England as an undergraduate, and made friends with a bunch of fantastic people. After we fell out of touch through email, I found them again on Facebook. The same goes for people I went to school with as a child. That being said, I'm still a believer in old-fashioned communication, and I get together with friends as often as I can. Facebook is great for long distance, and Twitter is even better for people you share interests or hobbies with, but might not necessarily have a long last friendship. So far now, I'm one with social media, and curious what the next big thing will be.
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