Follow me?

In the world of Tumblr and Facebook, where does Twitter stand and what exactly does it mean to have a Twitter account?  Everyday when I log onto Facebook I come across statuses that say “Follow me (insert name here)!”  But in a time when privacy is already in question, what does it mean to have quote un-quote followers?  Twitter is defined as a social networking and microblogging service that allows you to answer the universal question that many social networks are working to address, “what are you doing?”  It answers this question through short text messages called Tweets.  The short format of the tweet is a defining characteristic of the service, allowing informal collaboration and quick information sharing that provides relief from rising email and IM fatigue. Twittering is also a less gated method of communication: you can share information with people that you wouldn't normally exchange email or IM messages with, opening up your circle of contacts to an ever-growing community of like-minded people, but is this a good idea?

When I asked my friends about what they thought of Twitter, they all replied, “Oh I have one, are you following me?” or “It’s awesome, you should get an account!”  As I am sitting here typing this, my friend across from me is making an account and just asked what her name should be.  It’s the first thing people see and it is what they will remember you by.  Of all of the people that I have talked to about Twitter and its use, the most informative and interesting was my friend who is a computer engineer.  He said he was one of the first three thousand Twitter users and has been in love with it since the beginning.  He claims to only follow those who have good things to say and only lets certain individuals follow him.  One example that he gave was that it could be used to get in touch with athletes or artists, but is this safe for them?  Doesn’t putting their location and who they are with putting them in danger?  He simply said, “probably.”

Other than personal use, twitter is used for businesses.  It is a great way to keep in touch with friends and quickly broadcast information, but for businesses it is a fast way to put out your company’s latest news and blog posts, interact with customers as well as enable easy internal collaboration within the company.

I personally do not have a Twitter account and find myself wondering what is the point of it often, but after asking around and doing somer research, it is obvious that Twitter is quickly made its way up to the top of the social networking charts right behind Facebook and Tumblr.  It is the quickest way to send information because it is in the form of a text message and many people have joined the Twitter bandwagon since its launch in 2006.  It is estimated that there are some 200 million users who generate 65 million tweets a day and handle over 800,000 search queries per day.

So in the world of Tumblr and Facebook how does Twitter stack up?  I’d say its right up there and is making its way to the top.  It is by far one of the easiest social networking applications to use and keeps everyone informed, up to date on the latest gossip, and is a great way for everyone’s voice and opinion to be heard.  Time magazine said that Twitter is “remarkably simple” to use and revolves completely around its followers.  Although it has been said that much of twitter is “pointless babble” there are more positive reasons to get a Twitter account and am even considering getting one myself...

Collaboration

Many of the articles and movies that we have been discussing lately is about collaboration and it all has to do with how far technology has come in the past couple decades.  To think that it once took going to the store and having to buy an entire album, in which you may not even like all of the songs, is kind of strange today.  In today’s world, music is literally a click away and you only have to download the song that you want.  Sites like napster changed the world of music forever, by making it a social interaction site that also allowed you to download single songs from practically anyone in the world, as long as they were connected.  This simple idea to create a site that connected its users grew to a massive idea through myspace and facebook. Myspace was especially influential with music, in fact, I can say from personal experience that one of the only reasons I had a myspace was to see what songs all my friends would post.  Music, unlike other things in the world, is fairly universal.  Everyone all around the world is connected through music in one way or another.  From myspace, the  inventors of facebook took its greatest asset, the communication from person to person.

In society today, I do not know anyone that does not have a facebook.  Whether it is for work or to keep in touch with old friends, keep up on the latest gossip or anything else it might be used for, facebook is helping define this generation.  Looking back at what communication once was, it was sending letters and even in the past decade, emails.  But even emails have fallen into the shadows behind the newer and seemingly better forms of communication.  These new forms of communication include allowing us to participate in the production of a website.

Collaboration is seen most in sites such as wikipedia, where the entire page is run on its participants.  With a click of the mouse, you can add and edit information to any aspect of the website and the information that it provides.  This fulfills a subconscious need that everyone has to feel wanted and respected.    By giving every day people a chance to participate in the success of a website it gives them a sense that they are needed and that someone out there is listening to them.  Which ties all of this together...from wikipedia to facebook, they are designed around the need for communication.  We all want our voices to be heard. Whether it be what we are doing, using twitter or facebook, or our opinions through wikipedia or blogs, or even who we are as a person on sites like match.com.  Everyone wants their voice and what they have to say to be acknowledged. 

In a world that is continually innovating and progressing into the future it is absolutely amazing to think about where we will be in not only a century from now, but a decade.  So much has changed over the past few years that we find it hard to believe that downloading single songs onto our computers was once impossible.  What the future will bring, and how the need for humans to express their personalities and voice will be incorporated into that, is something that I cannot wait to see.

Media Diet

I never realized just how much time I spent using the various forms of media that are available today, especially the internet.  I found that with my phone alone I was logging in hours on the internet each day, then on top of that even more on a computer.  Social networking, Facebook to be specific is where I spent much of my time on the internet, and surprisingly it was mostly during the week.  In my mind, it would make more sense for me to spend more time online over the weekends, but in reality I simply waste hours of my life during the week when I should be doing things such as homework.  Even as I am writing this, I have another tab open on my screen with Facebook so that I can check it every so often to find out if any new pictures have been posted or statuses have been updated.  I am also instant messaging three friends on Facebook.  With so many uses for Facebook, I really believe that I could waste hours upon hours doing absolutely nothing just looking at picture after picture.  

Email is another really big factor, it is something that I check every single day at least three times, both my school email and personal email.  Where Facebook helps me to keep in touch with friends, email is a really good way for me to keep in touch with family.  Where the internet is a big part of my day today, when I am at home, TV is where I spend most of my time.  Television is not a huge factor here at school, simply because I do not have a TV in my room, but I do watch either a show or movie every night on my laptop, either using Netflix or a dvd.  The shows that I watch are all mindless, such as Friends or One Tree Hill, just something to get my mind away form school and take a break while I am laying in bed or getting ready to sleep.

When I added up my total media intake for a weekday, it came out to be between eight and nine hours, on weekends it was only four to five per day.  These numbers seem fairly average to me or for someone my age.  I know many others that spend even more time using media on a daily basis, but there are also some who literally have none.  To me, my media diet says that I like to watch shows that are designed for girls my age and I like to see what my friends are up to on Facebook.  Comparing this to the American society, I would say that it might make me look lazy, but that is only because the amount of time that I spend doing other things are not recorded.  The American society as a whole has taken on a much more laid back style, especially with all of the new technology.  

 If I could change my media diet, I would try to stay off of the internet on my phone. As easy as it is to just click a button, it would dramatically decrease my daily media intake.  

Another huge factor that has an effect on my daily media diet is where I am, first off in college away from friends that I have grown up with.  Staying in touch requires some sort of help from the media, namely the internet, applications like Skype have made keeping in touch so much easier since you can see the person you are talking to.  Although location plays a large role in the amount of media that we consume each day, it can also help get us away from it.  If you could go outside and do something active for a few hours, then you would not be sitting on the couch watching television or typing away on a keyboard.  Today’s overall media intake, I would guess, is close to an all time high, and my numbers seem to follow in line with this.  Now that I am aware of this, I would like to see some of my numbers decrease, and may keep track for another week just to see what happens.