I spy with my little eye (sorry, i mean mouse)

Facebook!! Tumblr!! Livejournal!! MSN!! Youtube!! :D a few of my loves. Have you hopped on to the bandwagon?

Social Media, you either love it or hate it and i am totally loving it! ( This does not mean i have multiple accounts on social networking sites! I only have facebook! and uh,friendster which i will delete soon when i find the time to do so, so passe.) Loving it so much that the most frequently visited website on my laptop is facebook :S

All right,let's see, What is social media? It basically describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. For a longer and more detailed explanation, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media

A point brought up in class was the idea of social media being a bad influence as its rise has caused problems such as addiction, social isolation as well as an invasion of privacy. While i do agree that there has been a proliferation of such problems especially among the younger generation today, i feel that its ultimate solution lies within the individual. The person ultilizing the medium has to take responsibility, of course this also has to be accompanied by moral values institued since young thus parents also share some of this burden. That said, i feel that the advantages social media has to offer us easily outweigh the problems.

• The first advantage that i feel the social media has to offer is it's ability to help connect individuals from around the world with each other. For example, instant messaging programs as well as skype has played a pivotal role in helping people maintain and build long distance relationships. Personally, my best friend is studying in Sydney and everyday, i am thankful for MSN and skype which allows me to communicate with her since calls are expensive! I am pretty sure that without the help of such programs, i would not be able to continue building our friendship.
• The second advantage would be the fact that it allows us to share things with other people, be it beautiful photos, songs, videos, and our thoughts, it is undeniable that the information database that we have access to is huge and due to social media's various mediums. At the same time,i also think it translates across the idea of web2.0 where we are prosumers - both consumers and producers of information on the WWW. Just like this very blog where i share my thoughts as well as any interesting thing i find on the WWW. My favourite website so far has to be ebay, there are seriously some remarkable finds!

Something i find astounding would be the rate at which information is shared, for example, the news that "The killers" cancelled their concert in Singapore spread so much faster via facebook compared to the rate at which it took the local newspaper and even the ticketing website to share the news. Not to mention, regarding the Haiti earthquake relief fund, many bloggers have immediately sent an SOS call to their loyal readers and facebook even has a group devoted to it!

Looking at all these benefits (although only two was mentioned), you'll be hardpressed to find a staunch non-believer in the usefulness of social media. Dear friends, let us embrace technology with open arms! oh, a video i found interesting about social media: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8