Monday, September 21, 2009

Week 3 - Blog Posting #5 -Social Media

Wikipedia defines social media as media that are "designed to be disseminated through social interaction."



Examples of social media are:
There are many, many more social media sites that I have not listed here.  Although I came into the game fairly late, I feel that I am comfortable with social media.  As a matter of fact, I have an account with most of the above, or I have at least tried the site out.  Several years ago, I had as many as three blogs with blogger.com, all on different subjects.  I eventually deleted them because I couldn't write three daily blogs and keep up with my school work.  I joined Facebook in 2005, when Facebook was available to colleges only, and connected with my friends at my undergraduate school first, then reached out to my friends from high school who were at other colleges.  When Facebook opened up to regional networks, I connected to other friends from high school.  Now I am connecting to my classmates here at Full Sail and to former students.

I've been a user of StumbleUpon since 2007, when I saw a piece on it in Parents Magazine.  I installed the toolbar onto my browser, and when I am bored, all I have to do is click the Stumble! button.  That button takes me to a website that has been catered to my interests.  If I like the website, I click the thumbs up button; if I don't like the site, I click the thumbs down button.  The more I use StumbleUpon, the better it becomes at finding websites that I will like.  When I received my MacBook from Full Sail, I immediately downloaded the StumbleUpon toolbar for FireFox.  Since June, I've amassed almost 3000 bookmarks from StumbleUpon alone, and all of those are stored in my browser on the Mac.  I've got about 5000 stored on my browser on my HP laptop.

Social media is powerful.  A few years ago, most respectable companies and corporations didn't participate in social media.  They had a website that was updated hourly or daily, and that was it.  Now, these same companies have joined the bandwagon because they know that social media is the best way to reach individuals.  The Centers for Disease Control have their own social media site set up where viewers can go to follow the CDC on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc.  The CDC even has its own island in Second Life. 

The following video sums up the infiltration of social media in our daily lives:




References

m0serious.  (2007, November 23).  Social Media Addiction Rap.  Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwAjur3_08Y

MJBrito.  (2009, February 26).  Learn Social Media in 1 minute and 12 seconds.  Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF6lBztZSMo
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