Social Media: Cheer or Tear?

With the advent of social media, online interaction between people are taking on a new dimension. Whether it is poking a friend or liking a person's status, this fluid exchange of comments and online activities bring people together with just a few keystrokes or mouse clicks. I would like to take this opportunity to share my personal experience with social media and how it has changed.

I remember jumping onto the social media bandwagon when Friendster was still the 'in' thing. It was a very simple platform that allowed my friends and I to share pictures and leave simple messages on each other's virtual walls. The in thing when I was in back in junior college was to add many friends and it was strange because I started talking to strangers and meeting people of similar interests. It was only after national service that I realised perhaps I was sharing too much information with random online users that I limited my Friendster information and even considered 'deleting' it. Oh well, its still out there collecting cyber dust as I'm typing this entry and I have not checked it out in a very long time.

About 2 years back I started to use Facebook when there weren't that many applications and the concept of interaction through online applications developed for social media was fairly new. One of the first applications I tried was a text based game which involved me raising my pet dragon and training it to combat other users. This was new and exciting to me, and I remember being very engrossed in that game. It was around this time when freelance developers saw a niche market on Facebook and started bringing things like Texas Hold Em, word puzzles and a myriad of other applications to spice things up on Facebook. The added chat feature allowed users to also chat with their friends or interest group pals directly, incorporating the instant messaging platform onto this social media platform. As we discussed in class about the semantic web 2.0, I can appreciate the potential for such platforms to continue adding new inputs that contribute to an enhanced user platform.

Social media has started to make its move to virtual avatars through the use of the platform called 'Second Life' and I wonder if this will be the future of social media platforms. Until then, I am contended to enjoy Facebook for the time being and only time will tell when I 'hop' onto the next platform that entices me. Signing off!