Social Media; can’t live with it, can’t live without it.

So far, I have been posting a few blogs concerning Social Media. However, I’ve seen some posts about Social Media where people were kind of “fed up” with Social Media, and to be honest I can understand why. Here is one of the reasons I can think of: there is a lot of Spam! Yes, spam; a bulk of unsolicited messages. All those messages about how crowded a train was or what everyone is doing every single minute of the day is basically nothing more than spam. Another example perhaps: some applications available for Social Media, for instance Facebook, create a “photo wall” with pictures taken from your and other (unknown) people’s profile and “tags” (placing your name, and including a link to your profile) your photo on the “photo wall”. Some of these applications can create “photo walls” of approx. 25 people. Now, it seems logical (and maybe fun) that you can see someone’s name and get a link to their profile when hovering over their photo on the “photo wall”. However, the downside is that people will eventually comment on these photo walls and you will receive a message (and e-mail, depending on settings) for every single person that posts a comment, oh what a joy.

On the other hand, there is also a positive aspect. I just stated that it’s not very interesting to see what everyone is doing every single minute of the day, but from some people (mostly the ones which really really mean something to you) you do want to know what they are up to. After all, Social Media is a decent tool, which can be used to maintain relationships. But there is more, for example: advertisements shown at Social Media might be a bit dull and most of the time unasked for, but the advertisements which are shown are (most of the time) also interesting, appealing and perhaps even inspiring. With interesting and appealing I mean, that they don’t bore or frustrate you, in contradiction to the advertisements shown in a commercial block on television, which are simply boring and frustrating. And last but not least, from my own point of view it’s quite fun to ‘spam’ the world with everything your doing, even if no one else cares about it. A simple post can even ease your mind when you’re frustrated or annoyed. 

Bottom line: What to do with Social Media? Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.

- Rik Terpelle

Fun in Social Media?

I was wondering the other day; do we use Social Media such as: Facebook or Twitter for creating and maintaining relationships or do we use it for fun? For example, at Twitter, do we tweet “Wow, that college today was really boring”, because we want to create or maintain a relationship with people who also found the college to be rather boring? Or, do we tweet simply because we can and we think that it’s a fun activity to do? I believe that we might use it for both of the reasons, although the fun factor is the leading one, because why would you engage in any kind of relationship which isn’t fun at all? We like to share funny, interesting, boring or beautiful things that we come across in life and we perceive joy when sharing it with our friends or even strangers, as long as it is entertaining. The joy from sharing also shows itself in messages such as: “you really have to see this” or “you don’t believe what just happened…”. 

Although we have this course called “Social Aspects of New Media” which zooms in on communication & relationships via computer mediated communication (CMC), I am quite convinced that we use these aspects only because it’s fun and perhaps worth noting: because we can. Isn’t it just fun to check out profiles of people which we don’t know, and perhaps laugh at their silly pictures or statements? I don’t think that there is any relationship involved with this attitude, yet it happens. 

Ok, ok I understand that we also want to keep in touch with our friends but then again, isn’t the real reason why we do that to have fun? When I’m bored I log into Facebook, because I want to be entertained and not to start any relationship. How about you?

P.s. Just for fun, check out the videoclip which you can find in my post before this one, quite a funny explanation of Social Media.

Kind regards,

Rik Terpelle

Social Media and Privacy

Do people still care about their privacy on the internet at all? It is possible to find so much information about someone if he or she uses social media. Moreover, if someone uses multiple types of social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn) it is possible to get a quite accurate understanding of that person’s life, so, where is the privacy and are we aware of it?

I noted that there are quite a lot of Twitter accounts unprotected. Reasons according to Cameron (http://l4x9.com/2009/05/why-you-shoulnd-not-have-protected.html) are for example: communities & communication. How can you be part of the Twitter public communities when your account is protected? Your tweets cannot be read unless you selectively allow people to do so. Some insight shows that it isn’t easy to communicate with protected Twitter accounts especially because it’s very basic communication. A simple linear communication model can be applied to this; however, I believe communication does not work that way and neither does Twitter. As a result, people use unprotected Twitter accounts and share their (private) life and opinions with everyone who is interested in it or just wants a sneak peek into someone’s (private) life.

The opposite, however, may apply for Facebook. Facebook profiles are more protected; my reasoning on this point of view is the way that people use Facebook. I reckon Facebook, in contrast to Twitter, is being used for more intimate conversations or posts with/to their “friends” and has the ability to create relationships. People give personal information such as: where they work, where they study (or have studied), their relationship status and even where they live on their Facebook profile. Furthermore, people post pictures of their life on Facebook from a party or event last night and even their holiday trips.

The question that arises: do people care about their privacy and are they aware of the effect that social media can have on their privacy? My opinion is that people are not very attached to their privacy and that they might be aware of the fact that social media can affect their privacy, but that they aren’t aware to which degree social media can affect their privacy.

Kind regards,

Rik Terpelle