Most Used Social Media Platforms

            Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat are all major social media platforms that many people use on a daily basis. So what sets these social media giants apart from others? Why are these platforms the ones we hear the most about and the ones that we use the most?

              Let’s start with Facebook. Facebook has 1.79 billion users that is approximately 440 million more people then populate the world’s most populated country of China. It is the King of all social media platforms by a long shot with the app WhatsApp being the next closest platform coming in at a measly 1 billion monthly users, a slight 800 million user short monthly.  The question has been asked time and time again “Is Facebook too big to fail?” There are arguments on both sides and many articles point out the demise of social media pioneer MySpace and its demise, but Facebook and most other large platforms are doing things differently.

              Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter all made at least 2 major acquisitions in the year 2016. Breathing new ideas and content into their platforms, according to Bufferapp.com, Facebook acquired MSQRD, a facial recognition filter app, in an attempt to compete with Snapchat for the younger demographic. Another thing these platforms are doing is launching new experiences on their sites/apps to keep users engages. In 2016 Facebook launched, Marketplace, Facebook Live, Reactions, and Instant Articles. Snapchat launched Memories and even a physical product in Snapchat Spectacles.

              Along with acquisitions and launches these platforms are relying on the need people have to connect a need that is not going to go away. They are creating spaces for people to connect and share via virtual communities so all they need to worry about is whether people will start wanting that connection somewhere other than computer-mediated technology. Will they? Only time will tell.

             

              

Topic: Blogging

            Blogging is a fairly recent phenomenon, only becoming mainstream in the last 25 years or so, though I believe the theory behind blogging has always been a popular one. There is a draw that we have as humans to look into other people’s lives and essentially see how our lives stack up. In the early 1910's it was termed “Keeping up with the Joneses” and I am sure we could find cave drawings from The Stone Age where Mr. Caveman drew his biggest and best hunting trophy to show to all his neighbors. The drive to care about where we fall is the reason tabloid magazines sell and it is the reason blogs are so popular.

              Everyone likes to put their best foot forward and blogging and other social media platforms have taken that idea to a whole new level. People have the ability to sit behind their computer screen and write about things that may or may not be true. I am betting you can find a “food blogger” out that that in reality hates cooking but takes great pictures and writes great intros to his/her recipes and is making lots of money so they keep creating content. I am guessing you can find a “mommy blogger” who has amazing pictures of her kids dressed perfectly, and a ridiculously clean house in the background who doesn’t tell you that she has a live-in nanny, housekeeper, and chef. But I don’t think we can really blame the bloggers, but rather the world that social media has created where those types of situations are accepted and expected but also revered.

              Phil La Duke an author by trade blogs about safety and published an article with  Entrepreneur.com titled “I Used Social Media and Blogging to Become Famous for Nothing.” He tells of being assigned by his company to start a blog and how he utilized not just blogging but Twitter and Facebook to get readers to his blog and to get other websites to pick up his content. He used keywords and data to make sure he was hitting the right demographic to grow his readership. Eventually he was asked to speak at events about Safety and was touted as one of the experts in his field just thru his blog. He was even invited to speak at a mining safety conference in Peru when he says “This despite my only knowledge of mining safety at the time was to stay the hell out of one.”

              What an interesting time we live in that someone can become an expert in their field even to the extent of being invited to speak on the topic when their only claim to the topic is the exposure that their own blog brought them. I said in my previous post that I don’t think social media is inherently bad or good and I feel the same way about blogging. There is a lot of good in it and I think when we look past social and lifestyle blogging we can see the benefits more clearly. Blogs are especially useful for businesses as marketing tools. Hubspot.com  provides a whole list of benefits of blogging for business and marketing. It can help drive traffic to your retail site, it can grow your business and ultimately make you money.

            When it comes down to it, I think it is important that we be transparent and upfront when we are the one doing the writing and when we are the one doing the reading we need to know that sometimes what we are reading isn’t always reality.

Social Media Change

           When the question is posed, how has social media changed communication? I think a broad answer could be given: completely. Communications since the introduction of social media has changed to a point where it is almost unrecognizable as communication to older generations. I can think of several conversation with grandparents where I will mention a life event in another grandchild’s life and they will ask where I heard it from. Usually from some social media site and they are blown away every single time. That I have seen pictures of a new baby minutes after they are born or that I saw a live stream of a nephew playing football while I was 100 miles away. They can’t even fathom it.

              As a society we went from reading our news in the same newspaper every day, to having access too and being constantly bombarded by real and fake news on our devices practically all day long. We went from getting letters from a relative who lived far away every couple weeks to seeing events in their lives take place in real time. Social media allows our communication to reach the masses in real time, so the events I am witnessing in my relatives lives are also being seen by potentially hundreds of others at the same time. This has been a help and a hindrance, we are fed so much information we have to process so much that I think a lot of times we become numb to things that would have otherwise

              We went from thinking poorly of a person or situation and maybe talking about it to a spouse or close friend to hiding behind our computers and saying whatever we wanted no matter how hurtful or damaging. I feel that social media has created a new version of bullying where people can cause harm to others simply because they are bored or because other people are doing it. This aspect of social media has not only given a voice for bad but it has given a voice to many people who would otherwise keep their opinions to themselves. I know a lot of people who are shy and very reserved who wouldn’t say much in opposition to another person to their face but when social media is involved it can bring out a new person who is opinionated and confident in what they are trying to relate to or express.

              We went from watching home videos once a year at the family reunion to having a picture, audio and video experience where friends or the world can access our latest trips or the funny things our kids did or said. In this same vein we are seeing only the best from so many people’s social media accounts. We are seeing perfect houses, amazing jobs, big bonus checks, perfectly behaved children and we compare our worst to their best. Social media has created an almost toxic environment for some people who spend their time comparing their lives with others and I feel that this is probably a leading cause for such a rise in depression in our culture today.

              We went from meeting with old friends and having loads to talk about to getting together and already knowing everything about each other’s lives and sitting in awkward silence.

              We went from only having the information that our newspapers and news stations gave us about political situations to having a database of information at our fingertips about situations, people. To having hundreds of opinions run past our eyes daily and having to decipher what is true and what matters to us individually.

              We went from writing term papers using the card catalog at the library or if we were lucky a set of encyclopedias at home to being able to access unlimited sources for educational purposes. Social media has allowed us to put our questions out to friends, to get responses that will be helpful in our education.

             Social media is not inherently good or bad and one could argue it either way, but no one can argue that it has changed the way we communicate in almost every way since it became mainstream. 

Social Media Case Reflection 1

          My first personal encounter with “fake news” will probably date me a little bit. Before internet was a mainstream think in homes we kids would send around chain main via the postal service. We would receive a fun letter from one of our friends threatening us with certain death or at the very least severe illness if we did not forward the letter onto to 7 of our closest friends. If we followed the instructions we would be blessed with our crush confessing their love to us or even better with super athletic powers, both pretty important things to a 10 year old boy. Of course as a 10 year old boy I was easily duped into believing that said promises would come true dependent on the action I chose to take and not wanting to die an early death I would promptly forward on the messages and wait for my athletic ability to increase tenfold. It is obviously to know either by my lack of Olympic medal or common sense that those promises never came true. It is easy to look back as an adult and laugh at a child’s propensity to believe something seemingly unbelievable but it is even more disheartening as an adult to read a news story and have to wonder if you are being duped once again. 

         Those chain letters, turned into chain emails, which turned to “fake news” being spread about social media websites. I have been on Facebook for all of a week (I know, crazy) and I have seen multiple stories of fake news all over the site. So what is it? How can you tell if something is a fake news or not? What can we do to stop it? Can it even be stopped? These are all questions that any responsible social media user should ask themselves although the term “responsible social media user” might be a contradiction.

          FactCheck.org provides a good basis for the definition of fake news and ways to spot it. Fake news is deliberately published hoax new stories, propaganda and disinformation that  uses social media to drive up web-traffic and/or perpetuate a certain agenda, political or otherwise. I would say that based on that definition alone the publishing of fake news is unethical. Over the years we have seen the influence that social media has almost everything it touches. It has the power to make careers overnight and it has the power to destroy them. It has the power to raise millions of dollars for wonderful causes and it has the power to cast doubt on the relevancy of those same causes. This effects is increased exponentially when something goes “viral.” This is the hope for these “fake news” creators, if a story goes viral and is shared and liked then their web traffic increases which ultimately mean more money in their pockets. I highly doubt that thoughts of whose career might be hurt or what damage might be done from their story really matters to them.

          The real issue though is not the content creators though it is the content consumers. Obviously it would be nice if those who are creating these stories just suddenly stopped and we could go back to believing everything we read on the internet. According to the Ethical Journalism Network “The economics of social media favor gossip, novelty, speed and “shareability”,” which makes it the perfect medium for fake news stories. These leave us as consumers with the responsibility of doing a little bit of research before sharing something online. Sometimes it is easy to spot a fake news story but most times it can be difficult especially when one tries to base their assumptions on a summary or headline alone. FactCheck.org suggests that you read beyond the headline since they are specifically thought up to shock or interest the reader. Another suggestion is to check the author and the originating website for credibility. Lastly they point out the importance of checking your biases. I found this suggestion to be particularly interesting considering the political climate we find ourselves in and all the news we are hearing about fake news in politics.

        FactCheck explains that we tend to put more stock in information that confirms our beliefs and are quicker to discount information that does not. They make the very understandable suggestion that the next time you are appalled by a story involving a politician you dislike to not automatically share it but to take some time to check it out. If the story proves to be true there is nothing wrong with sharing it on your social media as a way to express your beliefs or thoughts but you will find that the more appalling and outlandish the story the more likely it is to be fake new propagated for views.

        I think the real question becomes, are we as the content consumers the ones responsible for the fact checking or is it the social media websites’ responsibility to do that for us? In my opinion it is ultimately the responsibility of consumers. If a person is going to have a social media account then they should be concerned about what content they are perpetuating and should have a hand in deciding if said content is legitimate and verifiable.

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